THE POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS OF THE THEOLOGY OF PAUL

THE POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS OF THETHEOLOGY OF PAUL TILLICH

P aul Tillich was one of the intellectual giants of our time, andwe can be sure that his death will not diminish the range of his

influence. He was primarily a theologian and a philosopher. Hisinterest in politics was secondary and what he said about politicswas therefore fragmentary. He did follow the political eventswhich occurred during his long life, but his occasional involve-ment in them was never profound or significant. It is noteworthy,too, that he showed almost no interest in any phase of politicalthought, with the exception of Marxism. He ignored Machiavelli,Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Burke, John Stuart Mill, and otherclassics-not to mention contemporary political theorists likeLasswell or Dahl. When he did consider some of the great classicsof political thought, it was always with the purely philosophicaland not the political aspects that he dealt. In his numerous refer-ences to Plato and Aristotle, for instance, not a word is said aboutthe Republic or the Politics. By contrast, his knowledge of theol-ogy and pure philosophy was profound, vast, and systematic. Theresult is that, for the most part, the political implications of histhought have to be unravelled for him since he does so little of itfor himself.

The son of a Lutheran clergyman, Tillich spent his early yearsin rural Brandenburg where life was very traditional and authori-tarian. Lutheranism permeated his whole being. "I am a Luther-an" he wrote, "by birth, education, religious experience, and theo-logical reflection."' Whatever one may think of his theology, therecan be no question of the depth and vitality of his Christian faithas he understood it. The intensity and warmth of his devotion isnot apparent in his Systematic Theology and other technical writ-ings, but it shines through with an unmistakable glow in his ser-mons. As a distinguished Roman Catholic critic, Father GeorgeTavard said: "one must also acknowledge the unmistakable ring ofself-commitment in his sermons." 2

When Tillich first went to Berlin and throughout the rest of hislife on two continents, he was plunged in a world which was deep-

On the Boundary, p. 74.2 George Tavard, Paul Tillich and the Christian Message, ( London: Burris and

Gates, 1962), p. 139.

110 THE POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEWER

ly alienated from the Christian faith and even more so from theChristian Church, a world so alienated that it has been describedas post-Christian. Churches were empty or nearly empty, so muchso that some of them were little more than museums. This conver-sion of churches to museums was the result of government policyin the Soviet Union. In Western Europe, it was the result of pop-ular ignorance, apathy, and indifference. The alienation of mod-ern secular man from Christianity was greatest among the labor-ing masses and the intellectuals. For these groups, the traditionallanguage of the Christian faith was irrelevant. Concepts like faith,justification, redemption, sanctification, sin, and atonement weremeaningless. Tillich saw this situation not only as a fact but as anever growing fact. It was somewhat less characteristic of the Ameri-can people because, in the United States, the churches were nu-merous and full, church budgets were large, and the majority ofAmericans subscribed-at least nominally-to the Christian faith.But he saw Europe's present as America 's future. His comment onthis point was: "America lives still in a happy backwardness." 3

This situation could not be anything but shocking to a man ofTillich's background and it led him to devote his entire life to are-formulation of the Christian faith in terms which he hopedwould make Christianity meaningful to modern man and relevantto his concerns. It was his conviction that "the Church must pro-claim the gospel in a language that is comprehensible to a non-ecclesiastical humanism. It would have to convince both the intel-lectuals and the masses that the gospel is of absolute relevance forthem."4 To do this, Tillich thought that the traditional languageof theology and the thought-forms of the Bible would have to bediscarded. He also believed that previous attempts to infuse mean-ing and restore relevance to the gospel by creating a new terminol-ogy have been "deplorable failures. They represent a depletion ofmeaning, not a new creation." 5

Tillich therefore decided to try his hand at it and to succeedwhere others had failed. In doing so, he developed a formidablearray of concepts among which one finds being, non-being, theground of being, the New Being, abyss, alienation, estrangement,finitude, existence, dreaming innocence, essence, ontologicalshock, boundary situation, centered personality, the theologicalcircle, the latent Church, the manifest Church, autonomy, heteron-

8 The Protestant Era, p. 249.A On the Boundary, p. 64.5 Ibid., p.65.

POLITICAL THOUGHT AND PAUL TILLICH 111

omy, theonomy, and ultimate concern. And even these terms donot exhaust his conceptual creativity! Some of them are originalwith him, others are borrowed from other contemporary theolo-gians and philosophers. Even when he uses common terms likelove, justice, and power, he invests them with a meaning of hisown. Moreover, all these terms were fitted into a system in the Ger-man tradition of scholarship and derive from this fact an impres-sive logical structure.

In an enterprise such as this one, there are two criteria of suc-cess: (1) the fidelity of the new concepts in translating the sub-stance of the Christian faith and conveying it intact to modernman, and (2) the degree of success these new concepts have had insecuring the understanding and acceptance of modern man. Thefirst criterion will be discussed as we proceed with our analysis.

As to the second criterion, certain observations are in order. Toa Christian steeped in scriptural language and well versed in thetraditional concepts of Christian theology, understanding Tillichproduces a reverse process from the one Tillich anticipated. TheTillichian terms are checked not merely for fidelity but for mean-ing. We are like that Roman Catholic acolyte participating in amass said for the first time in English who, when he heard thepriest say "The Lord be with you," whispered to another acolyte:"He means Dominus vobiscum. "

Of course Tillich was not writing for traditional Christians.There is some question, however, as to how far he was successfulin reaching alienated Christians and non-Christians. Insofar as theproletarian masses are concerned, it can be said that he failed utter-ly. With regard to the intellectuals, he reached only those whosetraining in philosophy and theology enabled them to grasp themeaning of his terminology. Others not so trained, like naturalscientists and most social scientists, would need the frequent helpof a dictionary and would probably not have the incentive for do-ing so. Their attitude would be like that of a fellow political scien-tist who referred to political theory as "witchcraft." The cause ofthis distaste and lack of comprehension is due to the highly ab-stract nature of Tillich's terminology. It is a terminology devoid ofcolor and power. It has an abstruse and spectral quality. It cannotcompare with the concrete vividness and moving power of biblicallanguage. To be sure, the traditional concepts of Christian theol-ogy are abstract too, but they have the benefit of two millenia ofusage which has given them definite and concrete meaning. Onlytime will tell whether Tillich's terminology will acquire some-


thing of the same kind of context where frequent usage, historicalevents, and historical figures confer upon them a similarly definiteand concrete meaning.

In spite of this initial handicap, Tillich's thinking has had areal impact which has grown with time. This impact has occurredthrough the mediation of others who use simpler terms to conveyTillich's meaning, though not always with complete accuracy. Anexample of this mediation is through best-sellers like Bishop Rob-inson's Honest to God. The main source of this mediation, how-ever, has come from generations of seminarians who have read Til-lich's works and had Tillich's concepts drilled and drummed intothem. Later these ministers influenced the thinking of the publicfrom their pulpits and their positions on denominational boardsand agencies. In this way, Tillichian terms like estrangement andfinitude have filtered into common usage and thus are likely ,to in-fluence politics, or at least political theory, sooner or later.

Tillich's Concept of God

When Moses received his great commission to deliver the peo-ple of Israel from slavery at the hands of the Egyptians, it will berecalled that he said the people would want to know the name ofthe one who gave him that commission. Moses asked: "What shallI say to them?" 6 This was Tillich's problem too. It may be an-swered that everyone in Christendom knows that God is his nameand uses that name constantly, whether reverently, irreverently, orirrelevantly. But Tillich finds that answer unacceptable. Accordingto him, that name is associated with too many false notions thatcling to it like so many barnacles. That name conveys the idea thatGod is an object alongside of other objects. What we need is aname that includes and transcends both the objective and the sub-jective, essence and existence. Other commonly used names likeLord and Father are also objectionable. Tillich rejects them be-cause they are anthropomorphic, are drawn from only a part ofhuman experience, symbolize only a part of the divine nature, andsuggest a supernaturalism which Tillich detests.

In addition to these conceptual objections, Tillich is botheredby the emotion of embarrassment. He is embarrassed . when thename "God" is used in social gatherings, 7 speaks of the "pain ofthis embarrassment" which many people feel who "have had to

6 Exodus 4:13.7 The Eternal Now, p. 94.


teach their children the divine name, 8 and describes himself as"stung" by the use of that name "in governmental and politicalspeeches, in opening prayers for conferences and dinners, in sec-ular and religious advertisements, and in international war propa-ganda." 9 With typical honesty, Tillich admits that the elementsbehind his embarrassment are mixed: what one thinks of as tactmay be cowardice, and awe may be a disguised form of doubt. Inother words, one wonders if Tillich's embarrassment is caused bythe name or that for which the name stands. Presumably, there issomething of both in his reaction.

In a way, Tillich's problem with names is insoluble becauseany name that one chooses has to be symbolic and hence defective.What Tillich did, therefore, was to look for symbols that wouldhave the least objectionable connotations. To do this requires thatthe symbols be nearly brand new, and therefore his own, for onlythus would they have a minimum of existing connotations of anykind attached to them. The solution has its difficulties for Tillichbecause he laid great stress on the fact that symbols "cannot beproduced intentionally" and that they "cannot be invented. "io

Nevertheless, he tried the impossible in pursuance of his favorite"in spite of" which he says is implicit in every act of faith regard-less of contradiction and error, and in the assurance supplied tohim by his interpretation of the Reformation doctrine of justifica-tion by faith which absolves not only moral guilt but intellectualerror.

This intellectual somersault is necessitated by Tillich's re-peated assertion that there is no such thing as atheism. "So theparadox 'got hold of me," he explains, "that he who seriously de-nies God, affirms him. Without it I could not have remained atheologian. There is, I soon realized, no place beside the divine,there is no possible atheism, there is no wall between the religiousand the secular." 11 Inconsistently, however, he has a concept ofatheism: "It is as atheistic to affirm the existence of God as to denyit. God is being-itself, not a being." 12 But the inconsistency is onlyverbal: no one can live by it because everyone has an ultimate con-cern, whether he knows it or not. This being the case, it becomesan imperative necessity to settle on a name or names. Not to do so

8 Ibid., p. 95.9 Ibid., p. 96.10 The Dynamics of Faith, p. 43." The Protestant Era, pp. xiv and xv.12 Systematic Theology, vol. I, p. 237.


would be as impractical and bewildering as going into a store tobuy something without knowing its name.

Tillich's favorite names for God are "the Unconditional" and"the Ground of Being." He prefers "the Unconditional" to "theUnconditioned" because the latter suggests a thing, an objectivecondition, and therefore fails to transcend the subject-object di-chotomy implicit in all human thinking. On the other hand, "theUnconditional" carries no such implication and merely suggests aquality. The term "Ground of Being" appeals to him because it isfree of any anthropomorphic connotation. It means that not onlyis the dichotomy subject and object transcended but also thedichotomy between essence and existence. The German word"Grund" actually suits his purpose somewhat better than our En-glish "ground." In English, the word tends to emphasize the ma-terial aspect, i.e. the solid substance upon which we put our feet.The German word is more metaphysical in its emphasis, pointingto the foundation or basis of a concept. For the more material as-pects, the Germans have another word (Boden).

In trying to create new names for God that would be as fault-less as possible, Tillich ran into communication difficulties. Thenames did not "take" and certainly did not catch the popular fan-cy. They are colorless, highly abstract, and bloodless. Recognizingthis, Tillich became less uncompromising over the years. He ex-perimented with "the God above God" in the hope of makinghimself clearer. "The ultimate source of the courage to be," hewrote in 1952, "is the `God above God % this is the result of ourdemand to transcend theism.

"13He explained what he meant in

the following words which he himself italicized: "The courage tobe is rooted in the God who appears when God has disappeared inthe anxiety of doubt." 14 But this was not a satisfactory solution ofthe problem of communication. So he experimented with the word"Spirit'' with a capital S. This was particularly true with the thirdvolume of his Systematic Theology which came out in 1963. Inas-much as he had previously acknowledged the ambiguities of theterm, the change is a concession to the average reader (if the aver-age reader ever reads Tillich!). That his reticence was not entirelyovercome is apparent in his increasing use of the term "SpiritualPresence" toward the end of the volume. As applied to human be-ings, "spirit" (with a small "s") refers to that which underlies all

18 The Courage to Be, p. 186.14 Ibid., p. 190.

POLITICAL THOUGHT AND PAUL TILLICH 115.

human faculties (reason, emotion, will), the creative element in the"centered personality." This is Tillich's way of avoiding the word"soul" which is distasteful to him because he considers it loadedwith supernaturalism and superstition. As applied to God, he ex-plains: "The divine life is the dynamic unity of depth and form. Inmystical language the depth of the divine life, its inexhaustibleand ineffable character, is called Àbyss.' In philosophicallanguage the form, the meaning and structure of the divine life, iscalled `Logos.' In religious language the dynamic unity of bothelements is called `Spirit.' Theologians must use all three terms inorder to point to the ground of revelation." 15 At times, especiallyin his sermons, Tillich uses the word "God." It seems that even hecannot help it!

And now we are ready to raise the question as to whether Til-lich's God is the Christian God. One thing is clear: the ChristianGod is a person, a living person. In the Old Testament he is pre-sented as one who loves, hates, chastises, entreats, warns, governs,and forgives. He is the one who gives Israel its name and identity,delivers the people of Israel from slavery, gives them the moral lawand their mode of worship, constantly interferes with their nation-al life. In the New Testament Jesus speaks of God as a Father andteaches his disciples to pray to him as our Father. Can Tillich'sUnconditional be regarded as a person? Few people will think so.But does Tillich think so?

It would seem that he did: "According to every word of theBible God reveals himself as personal. The encounter with himand the concepts describing this encounter are thoroughly person-al." 1 6 He goes even further by arguing that Christianity is uniqueamong all religions in this respect. Biblical personalism, he says,"is different from the personalism of any other religion in its crea-tion of an idea of personal relationship which is exclusive andcomplete." 17

However, if we follow Tillich's thinking carefully, it becomesclear that the personal element is a necessity of the human mindand not inherent in the divine nature itself: "Man cannot be-ulti-mately concerned about something which is less than he is, some-thing impersonal."18 It follows-or should follow-that God is ex-

'6 Systematic Theology, vol. I, p. 156.16 Biblical Religion and the Search for Ultimate Reality, p. 22.'7 Ibid., p. 26.18 Systematic Theology, vol. I, p. 223.


cluded from personhood for the following reason: "A personbecomes aware of his own character as a person only when he isconfronted by another person. Only in community of the I and thethou can personality arise." 19 But God does not need other per-sons in order to be, and neither does he need a community of per-sons in order to have being.

The depersonalization of God is reflected in what Tillich saysabout prayer. There is no true person-to-person dialogue-be itpetition, intercession, or thanksgiving-because that would makeGod into another person alongside of the one who prays. What,then, is prayer? "The essence of prayer is the act of God who isworking in us and raises our whole being to Himself." 20 A fullerexplanation is offered in the third volume of his Systematic Theol-ogy: "Every serious and successful prayer-which does not talk toGod as a familiar partner, as many prayers do-is a speaking toGod, which means that God is made into an object for him whoprays. However, God can never be an object, unless he is a subjectat the same time. We can only pray to the God who prays to him-self through us." 21 In other words, for Tillich, it would seem thatGod is merely talking to himself. But even this weird idea cannotstand because the words, being concrete, would have to be the dis-torted creation of the receiving side on the part of the man whoprays. Any idea of "talking," with or without words, is the essenceof prayer as we understand it, and this idea is explicitly rejected."It is the Spirit which speaks to the Spirit, " Tillich re-iterates, "asit is the Spirit which discerns and experiences the Spirit." 22

Still another evidence of the depersonalization of God appearsin Tillich's position with regard to prophecy. God does not speakto the prophets or give them an identifiable message. "Therefore,"says Tillich, "I repeat: Let us not be misled by the phrase `wordfrom the Lord.' It is not an oracle-word telling us what to do or toexpect." 23 This position raises serious problems with the Old Tes-tament. To take just one illustration, the Bible says that kingZedekiah asked whether there was a word from the Lord, andJeremiah answered: "There is: For thou shalt be delivered into thehand of the king of Babylon. "24 Could any answer be more spe-cific, verbal, and better vindicated by the history which followed?

19 The Protestant Era, p. 125.20 Systematic Theology, vol. I, p. 245.21 Ibid., vol. III, pp. 119 & 120.22 Ibid., p. 192.23 The New Being, p. 116.24 Jeremiah 37:17.


One can only suppose what Tillich would have said if con-fronted with this passage. His doctrine of Scripture being what itis, he could have said: (1) that Jeremiah never spoke those words,(2) that these words were spoken after the event, (3) that thesewords were written into the text by some well-meaning and over-zealous scribe. Whichever interpretation one chooses, the effect isto deny that there was a prophecy at all. The conclusion that Til-lich's God is not a person becomes inescapable when we discusshis concept of the New Being. No wonder Tillich remarks: " 'Per-sonal God' is a confusing symbol."

25

Tillich's concept of God has destructive effects on classicalChristian political theory. It sends Aquinas' famous classificationof law crashing to the ground. It is incompatible with Calvin'sdoctrine of the sovereignty of God, a doctrine which prevents Cal-vin's teaching on vocation or calling from resulting in a freezingof the status quo. It is this lack of a personal God who intervenesin history which transforms Plato's ideal republic into a petrifiedforest of intelligible realities. Coming down to modern times, itplays havoc with the theory of "sphere sovereignty" propoundedby the Dutch political theorists Abraham Kuyper and HermanDooyeweerd which established a God-controlled pluralism where-by institutions like the family, the university, and the state areeach kept in its place. And yet, Tillich's concept of God does havepolitical consequences. These consequences, however, are best dis-cussed in connection with his concept of the kairos with which weshall deal later in this essay.

The New Being

For Tillich, as with all Christians, it would seem that Christ isthe cornerstone of the Christian faith. "Wherever the assertion thatJesus is the Christ is maintained," he says, "there is the Christianmessage; wherever this assertion is denied, the Christian message isnot affirmed." 26 The coming of Jesus Christ was an historicalevent. Without that event, there could not have been the Christianrevelation. We are not dealing here with Plato's Philosopher-Kingnor with the God of Stoicism or Deism. Jesus was an actual physi-cal person. "It was just this concreteness and incomparableuniqueness of the `real' picture which gave Christianity its supe-riority over mystery cults and Gnostic visions. A real individual

25 Systematic Theology, vol. I, p. 245.26 Ibid., vol. II, p. 97.


life shines through all his utterances and actions. In comparison,the divine figure of the mystery cults remains abstract, without thefresh colors of a life really lived and without historical destiny andthe tensions of finite freedom." 27 Elsewhere, Tillich reasserts thispoint thus: "Wherever the divine is manifest, it is manifest in `flesh,'that is, in a concrete, physical, and historical reality, as inthe religious receptivity of the biblical writers. That is what bibli-cal religion means.''28

In discussing revelation, Tillich makes use of the Greek con-cept of kairos, which means the fullness of time, the right time. Itmeans that the Unconditional erupts into the existential, that eter-nity breaks through into history. Every kairos is a revelatory ex-perience and has two sides: the giving side and the receiving side.The giving side is absolute and unconditional, transcending time,space, and all finitude. But the receiving side, which is the contentof the revelatory experience, is always fragmentary, distorted, andpartially idolatrous. For that reason, all secondary kairoi are non-permanent. Faith, which he defines as ultimate concern, "is a fail-ure in its concrete expression, although it is not a failure in theexperience of the unconditional itself. A god disappears; divinityremains.'' 29

The first indication that Tillich significantly deviates from or-thodoxy comes in his choice of names. He always, and with impec-cable consistency, refers to Jesus Christ as Jesus "the Christ." Herejects the name Jesus Christ because it is generally used as synon-ymous with the historic Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus Christ is a propername, whereas Jesus "the Christ" emphasizes his title. One feelsthat, were it not for the necessity of communication, he would noteven refer to Jesus "the Christ." Tillich has another name whichhe prefers: the New Being. That name, of course, has no historicconnection with any person, past or present, and is therefore sup-posedly free of erroneous incrustations. Tillich's thinking aboutthe name he uses for Christ thus parallels closely with his thinkingabout the name of God.

The real thrust of Tillich's thinking about the historical di-mension of Christianity is anti-historical. He goes so far as to as-sert that history can never either prove or disprove that Jesus ofNazareth existed at all. He even speculates as to whether we could

27 Ibid., p.151.28 Biblical Religion and the Search for Ultimate Reality, p. 5.29 The Dynamics of Faith, p. 18.

POLITICAL THOUGHT AND PAUL TILLI.CH 119

have had Christianity without Christ, whether the New Beingmight not be independent of Jesus of Nazareth. 30 Scholars haveshown through the Higher Criticism that the New Testament rec-ord cannot be relied upon as to the authenticity of the words anddeeds related in it. But, we are told, this makes no difference be-cause history can neither prove nor disprove faith. Faith is inde-pendent of history and beyond the reach of scholars.

From this point on, Tillich proceeds to strip the Great Kairosfree from any and every content that the Christian faith ascribes toit. We are not to rely on the words of Jesus because we cannbt besure he uttered them and "the teachings of Jesus" would makehim "into another person, who gives doctrinal and ethical laws."

31

We are not to rely on the deeds of Jesus either: "Not his actionsbut the being out of which his actions come makes him theChrist."3 2 The Virgin Birth is a legend. Jesus was the son of Jo-seph biologically as well as legally. 33 It makes no difference any-way: "Christianity was born, not with the birth of the man who iscalled `Jesus,' but in the moment in which one of his disciples wasdriven to say to him, `Thou art the Christ.' And Christianity willlive as long as there are people who repeat this assertion!'" Jesuswas liable to error: "Error is evident in his ancient conception ofthe universe, his judgments about men, his interpretation of thehistorical moment, his eschatological imagination."

35

Tillich denies the physical resurrection of Jesus, remarkingthat it is "absurd " and a species of "blasphemy." 36 And yet, some-thing must have happened to transform a band of dispirited disci-ples into a victorious group of evangelists. The orthodox positionis that nothing less than a physical resurrection, however unex-plainable, could have brought about such a transformation, as ismost evident in the case of the apostle Thomas. But Tillich willhave nothing to do with the orthodox position. In its place, he of-fers what he calls the restitution theory "which is rooted in thepersonal unity between Jesus and God and in the impact of thisunity on the minds of the apostles!'" In other words, the resurrec-

3° Systematic Theology, vol. II, p. 113.3' Ibid., p. 122.3' Ibid., p. 123.33 The Dynamics of Faith, p. 52.34 Systematic Theology, vol. II, p. 97.36 Ibid., p. 131.36 Ibid., p. 156.37 Ibid., p. 157.


Lion of Jesus was not a physical but a spiritual event whose onlybasis was the subjective experience of the disciples and in that ofChristians in the centuries which followed.

In Tillich's view, he was not de-mythologizing the life, death,and resurrection of Jesus because he holds to the belief that mythsare valid modes of expressing reality. What he claims to have doneis to "deliteralize" them. The difference is imperceptible. He hasalso depersonalized them to such an extent that it is impossible forTillich, in spite of many statements to the contrary, to see in JesusChrist the second person of the Trinity. He gives himself away inthe following passage: "Many Christians, many among us, cannotfind a way of joining honestly with those who pray to JesusChrist. Something in us is reluctant, something which is genuineand valid, the fear of becoming idolatrous, the fear of being splitin our ultimate loyalty, the fear of looking at two faces instead ofat the one divine face."

33One wonders how a believer in the In-

carnation could be thus afflicted with double vision. Lest thisjudgment seem unfair, we should weigh and ponder over thefollowing:

Jesus is not the creator of another religion, but the victor overreligion; He is not the maker of another law, but the conquerorof law. We, the ministers and teachers of Christianity, do not callyou to Christianity but rather to the New Being to whichChristianity should be a witness and nothing else, not confusingitself with that New Being. Forget all Christian doctrines; forgetyour own certainties and your doubts, when you hear the call ofJesus. Forget all Christian morals, your achievements and yourfailures, when you come to Him. Nothing is demanded of you-no idea of God, and no goodness in yourselves, not your beingreligious, not your being Christian, not your being wise, and notyour being moral. 39

The radical rejection which is so eloquently expressed in the abovepassage was made necessary by Tillich's insistence that the receiv-ing side of every revelatory experience is distorted and partiallyidolatrous. If the Great Kairos is to be an exception, the only wayis to strip it of its content, which is exactly what Tillich has done.It reminds one of what the British have done with their maxim:"the King can do no wrong." To make it acceptable, one must seeto it that the King cannot do anything (all his acts are those of his

38 The New Being, p. 99.39 The Shaking of the Foundations, p. 102.


Ministers who are responsible for them and who control him). Be-ing forced to choose between the demands of orthodoxy and thoseof his metaphysics, Tillich chose the latter. Why not? "Orthodoxyis intellectual pharisaism. "40

Tillich's position is also illustrated in his concept of grace.When speaking of it, he invariably uses the passive voice, e.g. one"is grasped." He follows the example of Plato in the allegory ofthe Cave who uses the passive voice too: the chains of one of thedwellers "are broken" and he "is dragged" to the mouth of theCave. "This may be seen," observes Carl J. Armbruster, "if wechange the proposal grammatically from the passive to the activevoice: `X accepts you.' Who or what is x? We are expressly told wecannot know." 41 Even more pointed is George Tavard's judgment:"Of Tillich 's faith in the ground of being of the philosophersabove the concrete being of the Christian God we may say withCalvin: `But it is mockery to attribute the name of faith to pureignorance.' "4 2 We cannot even say that the New Being is ghostlybecause ghosts, though they have no substance, do have shape.

The political implications of Tillich's New Being are likely tobe slight and very indirect. This would be the case even if we tookhim as the Jesus Christ of the gospels. Jesus was far less interestedin political and social questions than the Old Testament prophets.Unlike the ecclesiastical bureaucrats in the World Council ofChurches, the National Council of Churches, and the higher eche-lons of our mainline denominations, Jesus was certainly not a so-cial activist. He never joined the zealots who were the radical na-tionalists of his day. He said not one word about the institution ofslavery which was prevalent in the Roman empire. He denouncedno Roman policies. He encouraged the Jews to pay taxes to theRoman authorities. He praised a Roman centurion for his faith.He consorted with publicans who were what the resistance leadersin Nazi-controlled Europe called collaborationists. He passed nojudgment on the economic system of his time, in spite of his com-passion for the poor. He attended the synagogue regularly andheld the Temple in reverence, as he showed when he drove out themoney changers.

In short, Jesus was not a revolutionary in any sense that mod-

^ 0 On the Boundary, p. 51.41 Carl J. Armbruster, S.J., The Vision of Paul Tillich, (New Haven: Yale Uni-

versity Press, 1967), p. 183.92 George Tavard, op. cit., p. 81.


ern revolutionists would recognize. Not that he was soft, but hewanted to get at the moral and spiritual realities which underlythe concerns of social activists. He was like a doctor who is lessinterested in treating the symptoms of a disease when he has thecure for the disease itself.

If we discard the Jesus Christ of the New Testament and con-centrate on Tillich's New Being, the connection with politics isstill more tenuous. As we have seen, the Great Kairos has beenstripped of any content. It is difficult, therefore, to see at whatpoints the New Being could impinge on politics. To make theNew Being relevant to politics, it would be necessary to invest itwith a specific content that included most of the questions facingour world today. But for Tillich, this would mean loading up theGreat Kairos with distorted and idolatrous elements, and the GreatKairos would then become only one of many kairoi. This is not tosay that no relevance to politics is contained in Tillich's theologi -

cal system but that very little of it has to do with that part of histheological system which deals with the New Being.

There is one possible connection which might appear if Til-lich's theology should ever permeate the masses. A widespread be-lief in the New Being would encourage the idea that we can knowa leader without knowing anything about him. It would introducea curious sort of personalism whereby people would give unquali-fied support to political leaders without knowing their deeds,words, record, and policies. It would discourage thinking about is-sues and thus promote civic laziness. If you do not need to know,these things about someone as important as the New Being, whyshould you be more exacting in the case of political leaders? Thetransposition would be easy.

We have already seen some of it in such instances as Roosevelt'sNew Deal. Gallup surveyed popular opinion about New Deal pol-icies and agencies and found that many of the people who opposedmost or all these policies and agencies were enthusiastically readyto vote for Roosevelt for another term. The point here is not thatthey were right or wrong, but rather that they voted for a man theyreally did not know or know much about, and apparently attachedno importance to policies and agencies. The same kind of Tillich-ian unconcern for the substance of personality, the need to knowabout a person in order really to know him, was evident in muchof the support received by Eisenhower and John Kennedy. Ofcourse, Tillich's influence was much too restricted to blame himfor these undesirable political trends, but it can. be said that his


concept of the New Being would lead in that direction were it everto be received seriously and widely.

The Human Predicament

The human predicament is one of Tillich's favorite terms forwhat is usually called the doctrine of man or what Voegelin wouldcall anthropology. In order to understand it, two key words arenecessary: essence and existence.

Essence is true being and, as applied to man, it means man ashe ought to be or, in more traditional Christian terms, man as Godcreated him and intended him to be. With reference to human na-ture, essence is potentiality. This state of essence Tillich calls"dreaming innocence." By it he means-to describe man before theFall of Adam. The Fall of Adam, however, is not to be understoodas an event in time: "It has no time; it precedes temporality, and itis suprahistorical." 43 Innocence has three connotations: "It canmean lack of actual experience, lack of personal responsibility,and lack of moral guilt. In the metaphorical use suggested here, itis meant in all three senses." 44 But innocence is not to be under-stood as perfection, for only God is perfect "because he transcendsessence and existence. The symbol Àdam before the Fall' mustbe understood as the dreaming innocence of undecidedpotentialities. "45

Existence, on the other hand, is being in time and space, i.e. inhistory. It can also be described as the actualization of the poten-tial. Its most characteristic feature is finitude whereby man is theprisoner of time and space. For that reason, actualization is onlypartial and distorted, and that spells insecurity and anxiety. Whyand how did this transition from essence to existence take place?Tillich's answer is that man in his state of dreaming innocenceyielded to temptation by the exercise of the freedom with whichGod endowed him: "He stands between the preservation of hisdreaming innocence without experiencing the actuality of beingand the loss of his innocence through knowledge, power, andguilt. The anxiety of this situation is the state of temptation. Mandecides for self-actualization, thus producing the end of dreaminginnocence." 46 The transition from essence to existence, Tillich is

43 Systematic Theology, vol. II, p. 33.44 Ibid., pp. 33 8c 34.46 Ibid., p. 34.46 Ibid., p. 46.


careful to say, is not an event in time but a universal ontologicaloccurrence. Tillich is also very insistent that the resulting immer-sion in finitude is not sin, but sin does occur in finitude.

It should be pointed out that the word sin, like other tradi-tional terms of Christian theology, is distasteful to Tillich. Hewishes he could discard it, as vividly expressed in the followingquotation:

It is a word that has fallen into disrepute. To some of us it soundsalmost ridiculous and is apt to provoke laughter rather thanserious consideration. To others, who take it more seriously, itimplies an attack on their human dignity. And again, to others-those who have suffered from it-it means the threateningcountenance of the disciplinarian, who forbids them to do whatthey would like and demands what they hate. Therefore, evenChristian teachers, including myself, shy away from the use ofthe word sin. We know how many distorted images it can pro-duce. We try to avoid it, or to substitute another word for it. Butit has a strange quality. It always returns. We cannot escape it. Itis as insistent as it is ugly. And so it would be more honest-andI say this to myself-to face it and ask what it really is. 47

Before he defines the "ugly word" we must examine anotherterm without which sin can have no meaning for Tillich. Thatterm is estrangement. Estrangement is the immediate effect of fini-tude: "Man as he exists is not what he essentially is and ought tobe. He is estranged from his true being. The profundity of the termèstrangement ' lies in the implication that one belongs essentiallyto that from which one is estranged. Man is not a stranger to histrue being, for he belongs to it." 48 Man is estranged from God,from nature, from other human beings, and from himself. Never-theless, estrangement is not synonymous with sin. It is ratherman's reaction to estrangement, "the personal act of turning awayfrom that to which one belongs." 49 Tillich therefore explicitly re-jects the notion of original sin because sin is neither congenitalnor hereditary. It is an act of will by man in his state of existence,his refusal to accept finitude and.his persistent effort to resist it.

With these terms-essence, existence, dreaming innocence, fini-tude, estrangement, and sin (as defined by Tillich)-we have Til-lich's "deliteralization" of the story of Genesis. But that is not thewhole story. This same book of Genesis teaches that man was cre-

47 The Eternal Now, pp. 50-51.48 Systematic Theology, vol. II, p. 45.49 Ibid., p. 46.


ated in the image of God, and traditional Christian theologyteaches that this image was distorted but not extinguished by theFall. Even Calvin's doctrine of total depravity does not hold thatthis image is completely obliterated but only that all of man's fac-ulties are sufficiently crippled by sin to prevent man from beingable to save himself.

Of course Tillich does not use these terms, for they too must bedeliteralized. He says that the essence of man continues in themidst of existence and his link with the ground of being is not an-nihilated, though he is estranged from it. Man alone among allcreatures has the gift of transcendence. He alone is able to trans-cend his environment. "Man has a world," says Tillich, "namely astructured whole of innumerable parts, a cosmos, as the Greekscalled it, because of its structured character which makes it accessi-ble to men through acts of creative receiving and transforming.Having a world is more than having an environment." 50 Thistranscendence implies the ability to change and, sometimes, evento transform environment. Science and technology provide themost spectacular example of this ability. Man can not only controlhis environment in considerable measure: he can also understandits deeper meaning. It was one of Tillich's criticisms of Americansthat, while pre-eminent in control, we are deficient in understand-ing, He blamed it on Calvinism and Puritanism. "There is nomystical participation in nature," he complained, "no understand-ing that nature is the finite expression of the infinite ground of allthings, no vision of the divine-demonic conflict in nature."

51

This transcendence extends to that part of environment whichis social. Man is a product of history and an agent of history, buthe can stand aside as though it were external to himself and judgeit. Not only can he know history: he can understand it and incor-porate it into himself. It was another one of Tillich's criticismsthat most Americans know historical facts but that these facts "re-mained objects of their intellect and almost never became elementsof their existence." 52

Finally, man is able to transcend himself. He can look at him-self as though he were another person. He can judge himself andlaugh at himself. He can destroy himself psychologically so thathis personality loses its center and falls to pieces, or physically by

50 Morality and Beyond, p. 19.51 My Search for Absolutes, p. 19.52 Ibid., p. 27.


committing suicide: He can also experience "ecstasy" (standingoutside oneself) when grasped by grace through faith.

It is through these several aspects of transcendence that man isaware of the infinite ground of being, the presence of the Uncon-ditional. The contrast which ensues between essence and existenceand the tensions which this contrast produces constitute what Til-lich calls the human predicament. Man rebels against the finite.He feels the threat of non-being, what Tillich calls the ontologicalshock, when he realizes that both he and his world will cease to be.He is estranged from other human beings and from himself. He issunk in the abyss of meaninglessness.

The only thing that can get man out of his predicament isgrace through faith experienced in love. Every man has some ul-timate concern, and if that concern is really ultimate, the Uncon-ditional will shine through the paltry content of that concern andraise him to the level of the divine where subjectivity and objectiv-ity, essence and existence, are transcended. "Suddenly," explainsTillich, "true reality appears like the brightness of lightening in aformerly dark place. Or, slowly, true reality appears like a land-scape when the fog becomes thinner and thinner and finally dis-appears." 53 What Tillich describes here is a mystical experience.But he does not go quite so far as that mystic who, in answer to aquestion about his experience, said: "If you don't know, I can't tellyou; and if you knew, you wouldn't ask." That answer would havebeen no help at all! In spite of the fact that such an experience isunpredictable and relatively rare, Tillich is sure that it can havelasting results.

One reason is that the glow of it continues after the experience,.like the sunlight after the sun has sunk below the horizon. Theother reason is that the mode in which the Unconditional breaksthrough into existence is shared by groups belonging to particularhistorical periods, and the experience is kept alive by symbols, lit-urgies, and sacraments. The result of grace is to overcome es-trangement and bring forth a new creation: "Therefore we canspeak of the New in terms of a re-newal: The threefold `re,' name-ly, re-conciliation, re-union, re-surrection." 54 It vanquishes evilwhich is that "structure of self-destruction which is implicit in thenature of universal estrangement." 55 It overcomes the demonic

53 The New Being, p. 73.5' Ibid.,p. 20.55 Systematic Theology, vol. II, p. 61.


which "is something finite and limited which has been investedwith the stature of the infinite.

"56

The process by which man is grasped by grace and shaped bythe Gestalt of grace over a period of time is called essentialization,which is Tillich's word for sanctification. In a way, it is a reversalof the process of actualization, except that its end is not a return todreaming innocence nor a rejection of those potentialities whichhave been actualized. It is rather their union on the level of etern-ity where there is neither actualization nor essentialization.

At this point, Tillich departs again from orthodox Christian-ity. He could not, of course, expect the resurrection of the body ofChristians since he denied it to Christ himself. He refuses to be-lieve in life after death or everlasting life because they imply a con-tinuation of time after death. His favorite term is eternity: "Etern-ity is neither timelessness nor the endlessness of time." 57 Neithercan it be identified with simultaneity. The only thing we knowspiritually, essentially, and intuitively is the present, and the pres-ent is the Eternal Now. "Past and future meet in the present andboth are included in the eternal `now."' 58 Further: "The eternal isnot a future state of things. It is always present, not only in man(who is aware of it), but also in everything that has being withinthe whole of being." 59 Are there any penalties? Not the wrath ofGod which Tillich says should be eliminated from usage. 60 Oneshould likewise abandon the concept of "eternal damnation" and,instead, speak of condemnation "as removal from the eternal."

61

Tillich is very emphatic in saying that the Unconditional is be-yond our reach. We cannot work for it. No social engineering orpolitical manipulation can bring it about or control it when itcomes. Grace is free and undeserved, accepting the unacceptable.The greatest virtue is open-ness or receptivity. "Listening with anopen soul," he recommends, "keeping an empty space in our innerlife, sharpening our spiritual hearing: this is the only thing we cando. But this is much. And blessed are those whose minds andhearts are open. " 62

Is Tillich's analysis communicable? The question has been

56 On the Boundary, p. 40.57 Systematic Theology, vol. I, p. 274.5

8 Ibid., vol. III, p. 395.59 Ibid., p. 400.60 Ibid., vol. II, p. 77.61 Ibid., p. 78.62 TheNew Being, p. 124.


raised as to whether modern man experiences the human predica-ment, , the ontological shock, the existential dread, the threat ofmeaninglessness. Harvey Cox argues that modern man has nosuch worries: "The difficulty," he says, "however, is that they areobviously not questions which occur to everyone, or indeed to thevast majority of people. They especially do not occur to the newlyemergent urban-secular man." 63 The same point was made moregraphically by a New York taxicab driver who was asked what hethought about Communism. "Don't bother me with those cosmicproblems," he said, "I've got my own troubles." And it is true thatthe majority of Americans feel comfortable and secure in theirlives, liberty, and property. Threats to these things are still very re-cent and have not yet changed the general attitude to an apprecia-ble extent.

Where does this leave Tillich's human predicament? JosephHaroutunian came to the rescue by suggesting that Tillich waswrong only in making finitude the cause of anxiety. Said Haroutu-nian: "However, my thesis is that it is love rather than finitudethat makes man anxious. It is loss, the loss of people and thingswith whom we transact, as reminders of the total loss of the worldin death, that suffuses life with anxiety." 64 We do worry about ourwives and children because we love them. We are anxious aboutour jobs because they are important to us. We fear to lose our goodname and our position in society because we care for them. Weworry about illness, physical and mental, because we place a highvalue on health.

All these things are true enough, but they are not what Tillichhas in mind. They are present mainly during periods of crisiswhich do not occur all the time. Moreover, they can be treated bymarriage counselors, vocational counselors, personnel directors,public relations experts, physicians, and psychiatrists. They canhandle various types of maladjustments, but they cannot handlethe human predicament.

Take the case of the psychiatrist: "He must, for example, bewilling to distinguish between existential anxiety to be conqueredby a courage created by the Spiritual Presence and a neurotic anxi-ety to be conquered by analysis, perhaps in combination with

63 Harvey Cox, The Secular City, (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1965),p. 79.

64 Joseph Haroutunian, "The Question Tillich Left Us.," Religion in Life: AChristian Quarterly of Opinion and Discussion, vol. xxxv, No. 5, Winter 1966, p.717.


methods of medical healing." 65 No psychiatrist can deliver a pa-tient from death or the fear of death. In other words, for Tillich,existential anxiety is beyond human healing. Only grace can copewith it.

The Tillichian account of the human predicament and his so-

lution for it do not leave much room for the politician or the po-litical theorist. Politics is, of course, very much influenced by thephenomenon of estrangement, a word which has slipped into com-mon usage. We see it in ideological conflicts, racial tensions, theclass struggle, the search for identity among the new nations, thedisappearance of

asense of direction and mission in the older na-

tions. But, if Tillich's analysis means anything, it is that there isno salvation by politics.

Our social activists, who are so much in the saddle today, candraw very scanty support from Tillich. In 1942, he made the fol-lowing comment: "I do not make concrete suggestions about pos-sible political actions in the name of religion. This is impossible,and it never should be tried. Religion as such cannot suggest waraims or social reforms." 66 Would that the leading figures in theWorld Council of Churches and the National Council of Churcheshad the same self-restraint and humility!

The Protestant Principle

One of the fundamental concepts in Tillich's theology is whathe calls the Protestant Principle. He gives no formal definition ofit but dwells at length on its consequences. It is possible to givesomething of a formal definition that conveys what he means. TheProtestant Principle is that all revelations of the Unconditional be-come denatured as soon as they are given a specific content. It ishis interpretation of the commandment: "Thou shalt have no oth-er god before me." 67 In Tillichian language: "It is the guardianagainst the attempts of the finite and conditioned to usurp theplace of the unconditional in thinking and acting." fi8 It is on thetheological and philosophical levels what a kairos is on the his-torical level. Nothing must be treated as absolute which is relative,and only the Unconditional is absolute. All principles, being crea-

65 Systematic Theology, vol. III, p. 281.66 The Protestant Era, p. 191.67 Exodus 20:3.68 The Protestant Era, p. 163.


tions of the human mind, are relative-except the Protestant Prin-ciple itself.

The Protestant Principle does not necessarily refer to any Prot-estant "era" or any of the churches that now call themselves Prot-estant. It certainly is not the historic Protestant principle whichwas that the sole authority rests with Scripture (sola scriptura).Tillich explicitly rejects that historic principle as biblicistic andun-Protestant. The Protestant "era" may disintegrate and the Prot-estant churches may disappear, but the Protestant Principle is per-manently valid and will never disappear.

How can Tillich make such an affirmation when he holds thatall revelations of the Unconditional are distorted and ephemeral?By the same process of deliteralization he employed in dealing,with God and the New Being. Substantively (for the philosopherand the theologian) it means having no principle at all. Opera-tionally (for the statesman) it has been called the principle of hesi-tancy. For him who thinks, the Protestant Principle casts doubt onevery affirmation. For him who acts, the Protestant Principle castsdoubts on every alternative. Does this have a paralyzing effect onthe philosopher, the theologian, and the statesman? No, says Til-lich, or at least not necessarily. What the first two need is thecourage to think, and the third needs the courage to act. Tillichadmits that few are those who possess that kind of courage.

Closely associated with the Protestant Principle is his conceptof the "boundary situation." He explains this concept as follows:

When I was asked to give an account of the way my ideashave developed from my life, I thought that the concept of theboundary might be the fitting symbol for the whole of my per-sonal and intellectual development. At almost every point, I havehad to stand between alternative possibilities of existence, to becompletely at home in neither and to take no definitive standagainst either. Since thinking presupposes receptiveness to newpossibilities, this position is fruitful for thought; but it is difficultand dangerous in life, which again and again demands decisionsand thus the exclusion of alternatives. This disposition and itstension have determined both my destiny and my work. 69

Every situation to which the Protestant Principle must be appliedis a boundary situation. But "boundary situation" in politicalterms means "on the fence." Fence-sitters may sometimes stay inoffice, but they do not accomplish anything. The combination of

fig On the Boundary, p. 13.


the Protestant Principle and the boundary situation is peculiarlyexcruciating for the statesman because he has to make decisions.He is faced with choosing among alternatives and has no way todecide which is right and which is wrong. Indeed, it would be bet-ter to say that the only assurance he has is that it will be the wrongone, and the best he can hope for is that it will at least be partlyright. This is the inevitable consequence of being deprived of aguiding principle which is specific and concrete enough to havemeaning. One might say that the more intelligent and better in-formed a statesman is, the greater his hesitancy will be, a hesitancythat can easily lead to total paralysis. He may be like the prover-bial donkey who, standing at a point equidistant between two hay-stacks, died of starvation because he could not decide whichhaystack to go to. Of course it could be said that he was an assfiguratively as well as literally.

But we do not have to cite this apocryphal story to illustratethis point. We have the historic example of General Gamelin, thecommander-in-chief of the French army at the opening of WorldWar II. General Gamelin was highly intelligent to the point thathe was widely regarded as an intellectual. Deeply versed in mili-tary history, strategy, and tactics, he anticipated every move theGerman forces might make, including the one they did make, andhad thought out a course of action for each of these moves. Histrouble was that he could not make up his mind which one to actupon. Neither did it occur to him to take the initiative by launch-ing an attack while the bulk of the German army was occupied inPoland, and for the same reason: he could not face the risk ofchoosing any one line of attack. The result was military disaster.

By contrast, we have the case of Otto von Bismarck. The IronChancellor followed a course of combined diplomatic and militarymoves which brought him brilliant success. Like General Game-Iin, he had analyzed every alternative but, unlike Gamelin, he wasable to make a decision and take risks. Why the difference? It wasnot native intelligence or professional training. It was rather thatBismarck had a guiding principle which was the unification ofGermany under the Hohenzollerns. No Protestant Principle en-cumbered his commitment to the principle of nationalism underdynastic leadership.

The Protestant Principle has an even greater deleterious effecton the masses. The masses cannot be expected to stand committedto principles which they regard as dubious. No one understoodthis better than Adolf Hitler. There were no ifs, buts, perhapses,


and maybes in the principle of the voelkischer Fuehrerstaat as heexpounded it with unmistakable fervor and which the Germanmasses accepted with unquestioning enthusiasm. Hitler was soconvinced of this necessity that he decreed that the twenty-fourplanks in the Nazi platform were "unalterable." It is all very wellto say that Hitler's principle was immoral and sacrilegious, whichit was. But it is still true that, if men are to make history ratherthan merely endure it and be tossed to and fro by every fortuitousevent that comes along, there must be commitment on the part ofboth leaders and masses. Tillich's Protestant Principle, therefore,is destructive of politics, political science, and political theory.

The Sacred Void

The sacred void is Tillich's name for the situation in whichour society is caught. It is the human predicament raised to thesocio-political level. It is extremely painful. Among its characteris-tics, Tillich discusses familiar themes like the failure to treat in-dividuals as persons, the technology which enslaves mankind tomachines, the reduction of the proletariat to mere objects or tools,the loss of feeling for the transluscence of nature and a sense ofhistory, the demotion of our world to a mere environment, the de-monic quality of modern nationalism, the search for identity, thehopelessness of the future. Space does not permit us to elaborateon these themes which Tillich discusses thoroughly, at length, andoften brilliantly. Perhaps a single quotation will give the reader anidea of what all this adds up to in Tillich's thinking:

Little is left of our present civilization which does not indi-cate to a sensitive mind the presence of this vacuum, 'this lack ofultimacy and substantial power in language and education, inpolitics and philosophy, in the development of personalities, inthe life of communities. Who of us has never been shocked bythis void when he has used traditional or untraditional, secular orreligious language to make himself understandable and has notsucceeded and has made a vow of silence to himself, only to breakit a few hours later? This is symbolic of our whole civilization. 70

Though Tillich would never admit it, the sacred void is the directresult of the deliteralization of God, the New Being, and the Prot-estant Principle. The question is: can we get rid of the sacred voidand, if so, how?

7° The Protestant Era, p. 60:


The Bible, for Tillich, is not the answer because it is not thewritten word of God. It is only one source among others for re-ligious thinking, a source composed of the words of fallible menwho wclre the product of their times very different from ours. TheReformation doctrine of sola scriptura is nothing but biblicismwhich, for Tillich, is a definitely pejorative term.

We must not look to the Church either. We can get no helpfrom that quarter. As usual with traditional terms, Tillich discardsthe visible church and the church universal and invisible. The ba-sic defect he finds in these terms is that they are limited to Chris-tianity. He therefore substitutes his own terms: the Spiritual Com-munity, the Latent Church, and the Manifest Church. The Spiri-tual Community includes all mankind because every living humanbeing has an ultimate concern which, it will be recalled, is Til-lich's name for faith. The professed atheist and the avowed Com-munist are just as much members of that church as the Christian,and the fact that they neither know it nor recognize it does not ex-clude them. The Spiritual Community is composed of the LatentChurch and the Manifest Church. Those belong to the LatentChurch who have not known "the impact of the Spiritual Presenceand therefore revelation" but are destined to know it. 71 The Spiri-tual Community is latent so long as it has not had "an encounterwith the central revelation" and becomes manifest "after such anencounter." 72 That encounter, of course, is with the New Beingwhich, while final in Jesus "the Christ," is partially manifest inother instances of revelation.

The consequences of Tillich's concept of the Church are radi-cal and numerous. "It is not permissible to designate as 'un-churched' those who have become alienated from organized de-nominations and traditional creeds. In living among these groupsfor half a generation I learned how much of the Latent Churchthere is within them." 73 The traditional missionary role towardnon-Christians must be discarded: "Therefore in our dialogueswith other religions we must not try to make converts; rather, wemust try to drive the other religions to their own depths, to thatpoint at which they realize that they are witness to the Absolutebut not the Absolute themselves." 74 Further: "Not long ago, manypeople, especially members of the church, felt qualified to judge

n Systematic Theology, vol. III, p. 152.72 Ibid., p. 153.73 On the Boundary, p. 67.74 My Search for Absolutes, pp. 140-141.


others and to tell them what to believe and how to act. Today wefeel deeply the arrogance of this attitude." 7 5 Conversion has anoth-er meaning than making Christians out of non-Christians: "Con-version can have the character of a transition from the latent stageof the Spiritual Community to its manifest stage." 76 It must be re-membered "that the history of religion and culture is a history ofpermanent demonic distortions of revelation and idolatrous confu-sions of God and man." 77 Finally, not much hope is to be placedin the Manifest Church, Christian or otherwise, because it is neces-sarily hierarchical and hence cannot be expected to do much inpromoting social justice, "for every system of religious hierarchiesis conducive to social injustice. "78

Tillich finds no refuge in conscience as ordinarily understoodbecause it is part of existence with all the ambiguities which ex-istence entails. "It has no special demands; it speaks to us in the`mode of silence.' It tells us only to act and to become guilty byacting, for every action is unscrupulous." 79 Tillich has a conceptof what he calls the "transmoral conscience" but it does not helpus to distinguish right from wrong either: "The good, transmoralconscience consists in the acceptance of the bad, moral conscience,which is unavoidable wherever decisions are made and acts per-formed." 80 But the transmoral conscience is more sensitive thanthe ordinary one: "Those who have a sensitive conscience cannotescape the question of the transmoral conscience. The moral con-science drives beyond the sphere in which it is valid to the spherefrom which it must receive its conditional validity." 81 And so, Tit-lich throws us back again to the Unconditional-impersonal, in-accessible to all of man's efforts to grasp it, and bare of any con-crete substance that could guide us.

Law fares no better at the hands of Tillich. The trouble withlaw is that it is heteronomous, i.e. something external imposed onman and therefore (for Tillich) tyrannical and destructive of "thecentered personality." Tillich recognizes that law is necessary forthe maintenance of society, but its content is ever changing and ofnecessity ambiguous. It can be of little use, therefore, in guiding

75 The Eternal Now, p. 82.76 Systematic Theology, vol. III, p. 220.77 The Protestant Era, p. xxviii.78 Systematic Theology, vol. III, p. 205.78 The Protestant Era, p. 148.80 Ibid., p. 148. The italics are Tillich's.81 Ibid., p. 149.


decisions. This is as true of the moral law as it is of the civil lawbecause both are externally imposed. "Then we can and must re-sist it," Tillich advises us, "because it denies our own dignity aspersons." 82 Tillich's condemnation of law is harshest in the fol-lowing passage:

And certainly, the written code in its threatening majesty hasthe power to kill. It kills the joy of fulfilling our being by impos-ing upon us something we feel as hostile. It kills the freedom ofanswering creatively what we encounter in things and men bymaking us look at a table of laws. It kills our ability to listen tothe calling of the moment, to the voiceless voice of others, and tothe here and now. It kills our courage to act through the scruplesof our anxiety-driven conscience. And among those who take itmost seriously, it kills faith and hope, and throws us into self-condemnation and despair. 85

The same applies to natural law: "The natural law cannot answerthe question of the content of justice." B4 The only way in whichnatural law can be made acceptable is if we regard it as identicalwith the structure of our own being, internal and not external toourselves.

The nearest Tillich comes to an answer on the subject of law isin his concept of love as the reunion of the estranged. 85 But, hereagain, love has no content other than that which an individualmust decide for himself at any particular moment of time whenconfronting a concrete situation. Tillich's view on this matter oflove has proved to be the breeding ground from which spawnedBishop Robinson's new morality, Fletcher's situational ethics,Lehmann's contextual ethics, and the vast permissiveness whichengulfs our contemporary society.

For the Christian-and the non-Christian too-who is lookingfor intelligible standards of conduct, some point of reference forhis thinking, Tillich's concept of love is not the answer. His at-titude toward law, if widely shared, would have a disastrous effecton American thinking about the Constitution. The Constitution isthe supreme law of the land and, being a written code, is heteron-omous, i.e. externally imposed. It assumes that the rules and prin-ciples contained in the Constitution are intelligible realities with

82. My Search for Absolutes, p. 95.88 The Eternal Now, p. 90.84 Love, Power, and Justice, p. 82.85 Ibid., p.25.


an objective existence. They do stand in need of interpretation, butthere has to be something to be interpreted. Without that assump-tion, the oath of office required by Article VI of every public of-ficial-federal, state, and local-is utterly pointless. Without thatassumption, the intent of the Constitution, which is to guide andcircumscribe official discretion, is nullified. Thus, Tillich providesa theological base for those legal positivists who assert that law isofficial behavior, what officials do. We must remember his attitudetoward law, especially the written law. Law kills. Were Tillich'sattitude toward law to become general, it would indeed kill: itwould kill every constitutional republic, including our own.

Does politics hold the answer to the problem of the sacredvoid? Once again, Tillich gives us no hope. The State, unlike in-dividual persons, has no organic center, hence the rulers have toact as the deciding center of the group. Tillich's view is strangelyelitist for someone as individualistic as he is: "It is not the groupwhich decides," he tells us, "but those who have the power tospeak for the group and force their decision upon all the membersof the group." 86 In every ruling group there is always "tension be-tween power by acknowledgment and power by enforcement." 87

Both acknowledgment (which he prefers to consent) and enforce-ment are necessary, and both are rooted in the "vocational con-sciousness" of the group, and that vocational consciousness (senseof mission, purpose, direction) is the manifestation of a secondarykairos.

Getting down to specifics, we find Tillich very favorably dis-posed toward socialism. He accepts the Marxist interpretation ofbourgeois culture but rejects its materialistic and anti-religious ba-sis. He believed so strongly in what he called "religious socialism"that, at the end of World War I, he saw it as a kairos. By the end ofWorld War II, he gave up that idea but continued to believe in re-ligious socialism. Unfortunately, his discussion of religious social-ism is too vague to supply either the rulers or the ruled with mean-ingful guidance.

His endorsement of democracy is a qualified one. He saw de-mocracy as "the best way discovered so far to guarantee the creativefreedom of determining the historical process to everyone within acentered historical group." 88 But democracy and democratizationare not to be identified with the Kingdom of God. 89 Moreover, he

86 Ibid., p. 93.87 Ibid., p. 94.88 Systematic Theology, vol. III, p. 347.89 Ibid., p. 385.


thought that the period following World War II "will create tasksfor which the ordinary democratic methods cannot be used atall." 90 So democracy is not the answer either. Tillich was skepticalabout revolution as well. The revolutionist is in -a quandary for,"if he revolts against the authorities which have shaped him, hedoes it with the tools he has received from them. The language ofthe revolutionary is formed by those against whom he revolts. Theprotest of the reformer uses the tradition against which he protests.Therefore, no absolute , revolution is possible." 91

And yet, Tillich does have an answer and he gives it in terms ofthe kairos and eschatology. It should be noted that he calls thevoid which plagues us the sacred void. What makes it sacred is hisbelief that this void is the precursor of another kairos for whichthe world is waiting. A kairos "describes the moment in which theeternal breaks into the temporal, and the temporal is prepared toreceive i t. " 92

All kairoi are secondary, i.e. partial intrusions of the Uncon-ditional into existence, because there was only one Great Kairoswhich was the appearance of the New Being. Nevertheless: "Man-kind is never left alone. The Spiritual Presence acts upon it in ev-ery moment and breaks into it in some great moments, which arethe historical kairoi.''93 However, these kairoi are of variable inten-sity, like electric light bulbs which give a dull .glow or a brilliantlight, depending on the amount of electric power. They take threeforms: heteronomy, autonomy, and theonomy. He defines theseforms thus:

Autonomy asserts that man as the bearer of universal reasonis the source and measure of culture and religion-that he is hisown law. Heteronomy asserts that man, being unable to act ac-cording to universal reason, must be subjected to a law, strangeand superior to him. Theonomy asserts that the superior law is,at the same time, the innermost law of man himself, rooted in thedivine ground which is man's own ground: the law of life tran-scends man, although it is, at the same time, his own. 94

Clearly, Tillich favors theonomy as the highest form of the kairos,next but not equal to the Great Kairos.

The appearance of these secondary kairoi is subject to certain

99 The Protestant Era, p. 244.91 The New Being, p. 84.92 The Protestant Era, p. xix, Italics supplied.93 Systematic Theology, vol. III, p. 140.94 The Protestant Era, pp. 56-57.


"regularities." It is at this point that the concept of eschatologymust be brought in. All history must have some structure of mean-ing, or else it would be what some cynics have characterized as"one damn thing after another." There have been two answers tothis problem of the structure of meaning of history. One of them isthe cyclical concept which the ancient Greeks believed in: historyconsists of a series of cycles which repeat themselves over and overagain like the seasons in nature. The other is the eschatologicalconcept, usually called the doctrine of last things, whereby historyis deemed to move from a beginning to an end.

Tillich professes to believe in the eschatological concept andsays so more than once. Eschatology was originally a Christianconcept, often associated with Augustine, but it has been trans-posed in a number of secular ideologies like those of Hegel, Marx,and Auguste Comte. The difference is that the secular ideologiesconceive of the end as here on earth, in history. The Christian con-cept places the end as above and beyond history. The Christianand secular concepts are alike in that both are linear. It is to theChristian concept that Tillich claims to adhere.

However, his concept is in some ways more cyclical than es-chatological. The "regularities" of the secondary kairoi are thatthey appear and re-appear in a particular order. Thus, accordingto Tillich, the early Middle Ages were theonomous, the later Mid-dle Ages were heteronomous, and the modern period was auton-omous. His diagnosis of the situation of contemporary man is that"he is the autonomous man who has become insecure in his au-tonomy. "95 He is ready for a new theonomy. That Tillich's doc-trine of the kairos is not truly eschatological is evident in the fol-lowing statement: "There is, in the doctrine of the Kairos, no finalstage in which dialectics, against its nature, ceases to operate." 96

Other elements in Tillich's theology seriously contradict his as-sertions that his thinking is eschatological. There is no universalhistory. 97 "History has no aim, either in time or in eternity." 98 Hefinds that "there is no progress from one mature style to the oth-er." 99 Again: "Mankind does not become better; good and evil aremerely raised to a higher plane."'" Again he says: "The state of

95 Ibid., p. 192. The italics are Tillich's.96 Ibid., p. 48.97 Systematic Theology, vol. III, p. 341.98 Ibid., p. 352.99 Ibid., p. 334.'°° On the Boundary, p. 77.


ultimate concern admits no more of progress than of obsolescenceor regression.

"lolThough he does not realize it, in this case as in

so many others, Tillich is more Greek than Christian.Tillich's conclusion is that the problem of the sacred void can

be solved only by the coming of a theonomy, that we must wait forit, and that we cannot know when it will come. In non-Tillichianlanguage, we must wait for a miracle and hope it will not be toolong delayed.

Conclusion

A review of Tillich's thought shows that Tillich was a liberal,theologically and politically. He himself admitted as much: "Sincemy first political decision a few years before World War I, I havestood with the political left, even to opposing very strong conser-vative traditions." 102 His liberalism was a reaction against the au-thoritarianism prevailing in his family and in rural Brandenburg.It was the typical self-assertion of a very young man against hisbackground, an act of personal independence, and he did not out-grow it with adulthood as most of us do. "Once a man has brokenwith the taboos of the most sacred authorities," he confessed, "hecannot subject himself to another heteronomy, whether religiousor political." 03

There is only one point at which Tillich deviatessignificantly from the contemporary liberal position, especially aswe find it among Protestant clergymen, namely that he was not asocial activist. This deviation can probably be attributed to the Lu-theranism in which he was brought up, a remnant of which clungto him for the rest of his life.

Tillich was essentially an individualist. His individualism isapparent in his concept of theonomy because, in it, you have allthe advantages of autonomy without any of the disadvantages. Intheonomy, the self is neither extinguished nor denatured but re-tained and elevated to a higher level, the realm of the eternal. Til-Iich reminds one of Rousseau in his individualism. "The prob-lem," said Rousseau, " is to find a form of association which willdefend and protect with the whole common force the person andgoods of each associate, and in which each, while uniting himselfwith all, may still obey himself alone, and remain as free as be-

101 Systematic Theology, vol. III, p. 336.102 On the Boundary, p. 44.103 Ibid., p. 38.


fore." 104 This is the crux of Tillich's position too, for in the grip ofthe Unconditional, the individual person obeys himself alone. Thesame parallel can be drawn between the two thinkers with regardto moral liberty. Rousseau said that it "alone makes him trulymaster of himself" and that "obedience to a law which we pre-scribe to ourselves is liberty." 105 That is precisely what Tillichthinks, for any other conception of law would be heteronomous,even if decreed by "a heavenly tyrant." Why, then, not be satisfiedwith autonomy pure and simple? Because autonomy is not asdeeply rooted in the Unconditional as theonomy.

Tillich's liberalism shows also in his likes and dislikes. Goodwords, for him; are open-ness, receptivity, freedom, risk, democ-racy, and socialism. Bad words are biblicism, fundamentalism, su-pernaturalism, and authoritarianism. For those bad words, there isno boundary situation, no relativity. It is often overlooked, espe-cially by liberals, that liberalism is not exempt from intolerance.Some things are beyond the pale, and others are not. It just de-pends on which ones.

It will be recalled that we gave two criteria for success in anenterprise like Tillich's: (1) the fidelity of the new concepts in con-veying intact the substance of the Christian faith to modern man,and (2) the degree of success these new concepts have had in secur-ing the understanding and acceptance of modern man.

Our survey of Tillich's theology makes it clear that he hasfailed to meet the first criterion. What he has actually done is toinvent a new religion. But we must admit that his is a fascinating,exciting, challenging, impressive, mind-stretching, and spirit-stretching failure. As such, it deserves sincere admiration evenfrom those who cannot accept his religion.

As to the second criterion, Tillich has achieved a considerablemeasure of success. His religion has many followers and has influ-enced many of those who are not his followers. His influence willprobably continue to grow for some years, but it will not be endur-ing. His theology is too abstract and disembodied. His problemwill be that of a contemporary of Voltaire who had concocted anew religion which he thought far more rational and acceptablethan Christianity. The trouble was that he could not get anybodyto believe in it. So he turned to Voltaire and asked: "What can I do

104 Jean Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract, Everyman Edition, (Londonand Toronto: J. M. Dent R Co., 1927), p. 14. Italics supplied.

105 Ibid., p. 19.


to get people to believe in my religion?" To which Voltaire, thatmaster of sardonic humor, replied: "You might try to get yourselfcrucified, die, and rise again on the third day."

RENE de VISME WILLIAMSONLouisiana State University in Baton Rouge

Major Works of Paul Tillich:

Systematic Theology, 3 volumes, (Chicago: The University of Chi-cago Press, 1951, 1957, and 1963)

The Protestant Era, (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press,1948)

The Shaking of the Foundations, (New York: Charles Scribner'sSons, 1948)

The Courage to Be, ( New Haven and London: Yale UniversityPress, 1952)

The New Being, ( New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1955)The Eternal Now, (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1955)Biblical Religion and the Search for Ultimate Reality, (Chicago:

The University of Chicago Press, 1955)The. Dynamics of Faith, (New York: Harper & Row, 1957)Love, Power, and Justice: Ontological Analyses and Ethical Impli-

cations, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1960)Morality and Beyond, (New York and Evanston: Harper 8c Row,

Publishers, 1963)On the Boundary: An Autobiographical Sketch, (New York: Charles

Scribner's Sons, 1966)My Search for Absolutes, (New York: Simon 8c Schuster, 1967)

THE POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS OF THE THEOLOGY OF PAUL

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