Paul Tillich: An Appraisal

149 Pages·1963·0.92 MB·English

by  J. Heywood Thomas

PAUL TILLICH: AN APPRAISAL
BY J. HEYWOOD THOMAS
THE WESTMINSTER PRESS PHILADELPHIA

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© SCM Press Ltd 1963
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NO. 63-12599
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

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PIAE PATRIS MEMORIAE

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CONTENTS

Preface 9
INTRODUCTION: LIFE AND DEVELOPMENT 11
I THE NATURE AND METHOD OF THEOLOGY 21
II THE DOCTRINE OF GOD AND REVELATION 46
III CHRISTOLOGY AND HISTORICAL CRITICISM 78
IV THE MEANING OF THE INCARNATION 91
V THE DOCTRINE OF MAN 112
VI THE DOCTRINE OF THE CHURCH 134
VII HISTORY AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD 150
VIII CONCLUSION 172
Appendix: Catholic Criticism of Tillich 187
Select Index of Names 215
Index of Subjects 216

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PREFACE

BEFORE going to Union Theological Seminary in 1952 I knew but little of Paul Tillich, and
so I was grateful for the opportunity of hearing him expound his theological system and of
sitting at his feet. On my return to Britain I wrote a little article entitled "'Introducing Paul
Tillich'" ( London Quarterly Review, January 1956). Several months after it appeared one
reader was good enough to thank me for it and to express the hope that I should attempt a
more thorough introduction in the form of a book. Thus the idea of this book was born, and
for a long time I did nothing about it. However, after Volume 2 of Systematic Theology
appeared I set to work, and the first draft of the book was finished in 1960. It was not
published then because the publication of the third and final volume of Systematic Theology
was thought to be imminent, but two years have now passed and it still has not appeared. To
delay further the publication of this attempt at introduction and evaluation would not only
involve postponing its final appearance but indeed make this exceedingly difficult; for even
now books on Tillich have begun to appear. Father Tavard Paul Tillich and the Christian
Message is an example. This excellent study of Tillich's Christology appeared too late for me
to make really full use of it, but I have tried to indicate the extent of my agreement with his
searching criticisms of Tillich in the appendix on Catholic criticism which I have added.
However, even if it had appeared some time ago I should still have felt that some such study
as mine was needed. For, though Father Tavard is amazingly sympathetic and tries to present
some portrait of Tillich the theologian, yet his book is essentially the examination of one
aspect of Tillich's thought--and that, too,
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from a viewpoint which made it inevitable that Tillich's thought should prove unsatisfactory
in his eyes.
The same may be said of Professor Kenneth Hamilton book, The System and the Gospel,
which is to be published concurrently with mine. It seems that Professor Hamilton wants to
argue much the same thesis as Father Tavard--that the demands of the system militate against
the proper expression of the Gospel. He does many things that I also wish to do--such as
criticizing the ambiguity of Tillich's thought--but always for the sole purpose of showing the
reader the error of Tillich's ways. My aim has been to try and show the bare bones of the
system and the way in which they are so richly clothed with flesh, and only then to point out
confusions and errors. In short, I have attempted an introduction and evaluation rather than a
simple critique. True, Tillich needs to be criticized with all the power and penetration we can
muster, but we also need to understand what he is saying. I have sought, above all, to repay a
pupil's double debt--to say what I have learned and to pull my teacher's work to bits. And now
I am very conscious of having attempted far more than I have been able to achieve.
Many people have shown me much kindness and I must indicate my gratitude. My friend, Dr
H. Cunliffe-Jones, read the entire manuscript and made several useful criticisms. Professors
Ramsey and McIntyre, the editors of the SCM Press Library of Philosophy and Theology,
also encouraged me with constructive criticism. I am grateful to them for having saved me
from infelicities, inaccuracies and errors, and if any such faults remain the responsibility is, of
course, entirely mine. Thanks are also due to the editors of The Scottish Journal of Theology
and The London Quarterly Review for their permission to use material that has appeared in
their journals, to the editorial staff of the SCM Press for their patience, and to Miss June Hogg
who typed the manuscript.
J. H. T.
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Introduction

LIFE AND DEVELOPMENT
LIKE many a distinguished figure before him, Paul Tillich was born the son of a clergyman in
a village manse. He was born on 20th August 1886 in Starzeddel, a village in the province of
Brandenburg. Four years later the family moved to Sch?nfliessNeumark where Paul's father
was superintendent of the diocese. The young boy was sent to the common school at first, but
he received private lessons in Latin so that later he went to a humanistic 'gymnasium' in the
nearby city of K?nigsbergNeumark. These medieval towns in which he spent the first fourteen
years of his life made a profound impression on him as did also the country which surrounded
his home. Though he has never harboured a romantic hostility towards technical civilization
the ties with the country remained deep in his soul. Nearly all his great memories and strong
longings, he tells us, are linked with the soil, weather, wind and woods. However, during this
time the boy made regular visits to Berlin, his father's birthplace; and these visits were for him
a source of excitement which was as strange and mysterious as is seeing the sea for a child
brought up in the country. When in 1900 his father was called to an important position in
Berlin Paul was overjoyed. There he resumed his classical education in a gymnasium, passing
his final examination in 1904 and matriculating in the theological faculties of Berlin,
T?bingen and Halle. In 1909 he took his first and in 1911 his second theological examination.
Even before entering the University he had studied philosophy and gained a good knowledge
of the history of philosophy and a working knowledge of Fichte and Kant. Next he became
acquainted with the work of Schleiermacher, Hegel and Schelling. In 1910 he presented a
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thesis on Schelling for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy of Breslau,1 and two years later he
wrote another thesis on Schelling for the degree of Licentiate of Theology from Halle.2
In 1912 he was ordained a minister of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of the province of
Brandenburg. Two years later the First World War broke out, and he joined the Army as a
chaplain, serving for four years. When the war was over, he became a Privatdozent of
Theology in the University of Berlin, and so began his long academic career.
During the war he had sought relief from the ugly gruesomeness and destructiveness of war in
painting, and he studied both reproductions of paintings and the history of art. This adventure
reached its climax in his seeing a picture by Botticelli in Berlin on his last furlough of the war.
'The discovery of painting', he says, 'was for me an experience of decisive importance.'3 So
significant indeed was this that from reflection upon this experience and from the
interpretation of art he gained the fundamental categories of his philosophy of religion. His
interest in art also led him to a profounder sympathy with the Roman Catholic Church. Thus
he says, 'My growing inclination towards the old Church and her solutions of the problems of
"God and the world", "state and Church", were nourished by the overwhelming impression
made upon me by early Christian art in Italy. What no amount of Church history had brought
about was accomplished by the mosaics in ancient Roman basilicas.'4 A more important
consequence--for Tillich has never regarded Roman Catholicism as a possible spiritual home-
-was his growing interest in a 'theology of culture'. This is what he taught in the historical and
systematic courses he gave between 1919 and 1924. The lectures covered such subjects as the
relation of religion to politics, art, philosophy, psycho-analysis and sociology. All this was an
attempt at apologetic theology which would speak to the cultural
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1 Die religionsgeschichtliche Konstruktion in Schellings positiver Philosophie, ihre

Voraussetzungen und Prinzipien, Breslau, Fleischmann, 1910.
2 Mystik und Schuldbewusstsein in Schellings Entwicklung, G?tersloh, Bertelsmann, 1912.
3 The Interpretation of History, p. 15.
4 Ibid., p. 16.
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upheaval of post-war Berlin, the excitement of which Tillich enjoyed to the full.
After some five years in Berlin he moved to Marburg, where he was Professor of Theology.
Marburg presented him with a completely different cultural situation from that of Berlin
inasmuch as he found the students deeply influenced by the neo-orthodox theology. The result
was that all cultural problems were banned from theology and theologians such as
Schleiermacher and Harnack regarded as really useless. At first Tillich was very much
depressed by this, but later he came to feel that this too was a challenge to find a new
apologetic theology. And in 1925 he began his Systematic Theology, the first volume of which
was not to appear until over twenty-five years later. The existentialism of this first volume
reveals the influence of Marburg, for it was there that Tillich met with existentialism in its
twentieth-century form. Of it he says, 'I resisted, I tried to learn, I accepted the new way of
thinking more than the answers it gave.'1 In some ways it was not a new way of thinking, for
its dialectical pattern is something which takes us as far back as Hegel. It may well be that
Tillich's 'existentialism' is no more than the expression of what he had learnt from Schelling
and his teacher, Martin K?hler, in language learnt from Heidegger. At any rate K?hler
certainly influenced his theological method profoundly.2 Tillich's dialectical method was a
point of contact with his pupils, and it is worth noting that his view of dialectics is not the
same as Barth's. 'Dialectics', he says, 'is the way of seeking for truth by talking with others
from different points of view, through "Yes" and "No", until a "Yes" has been reached which
is hardened in the fire of many "No's" and which unites the elements of faith promoted in the
discussion. It is most unfortunate that in recent years the name "dialectical theology" has been
applied to a theology that is strongly opposed to any kind of dialectics.'3
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1 "'Autobiographical Reflections'", The Theology of Paul Tillich (ed. C. W. Kegley and R.

W. Bretall), New York, Macmillan, 1952, p. 14.
2 See The Protestant Era, London, Nisbet, 1951, pp. xxviii-xxx. Cf. Ch. Rhein, Paul

Tillich, Philosoph und Theologe, Stuttgart, Evangelisches Verlagswerk, 1957, pp. 21f.
3 Op. cit., p. xxviii.
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In 1928 he accepted the call to Dresden as Professor of the Philosophy of Religion and Social
Philosophy. Here he enjoyed once more the life of a big city which had always appealed so
much to him. Culturally Dresden was very much alive, being a centre of visual art,
architecture, opera and ballet. All of this Tillich once more savoured to the full. His move to
Frankfurt in 1929 took him to a very similar cultural situation. The University there had no
theological faculty, but Tillich's occupation of the Chair of Philosophy tended to fill that gap.
He felt impelled to make philosophy a living issue for his pupils and so his lectures were
concerned with the boundary between philosophy and theology. This, together with his public
speaking, brought Tillich into conflict with the growing Nazi movement. When Hitler became
German Chancellor Tillich was instantly dismissed from his post. Fortunately Reinhold
Niebuhr happened to be in Germany that summer and he invited Tillich to Union Theological
Seminary, New York. In November 1933 he and his family left Germany and emigrated to the
United States of America. The greater part of his academic career has thus been spent in the
U.S., and this has been mostly in New York where he was Professor of Philosophical
Theology at Union Seminary. On reaching retiring age he was invited by Harvard University
to become one of its University Professors. In 1955, therefore, he began his second American
career.
This bare outline of his life-story helps us to understand the development of Tillich's
theological thought. He has been called a romantic and he has admitted the justice of this
description because of his 'relationship to nature' and his relation to history. His relationship
to nature, he says, is expressed in a predominantly aesthetic-meditative attitude rather than a
scientific-analytical or technical relation. This attitude, which has profound implications for
his theology, has its roots in his biography. His actual experience of nature was one of these
roots, while the influence of romantic poetry and that of Lutheran theology also combined to
effect this romantic attitude towards nature. His early life--and probably his later life as well--
seems to have been characterized by a
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Wordsworthian attachment to nature, indeed a sort of nature-mysticism. As Leibrecht says:
'Though he prefers to call himself an "ecstatic naturalist", there is quite a bit of the romanticist
in Tillich. Let him but speak of a tree and his romantic strain at once becomes apparent. He
does not belittle the scientist, but yet avows that the latter can describe only the biological and
chemical processes of the tree's growth. He cannot explain what any particular tree is as such,
for itself. To see nature in its creative ground requires a poet or a philosopher.'1
Doubtless this Wordsworthian attitude was strengthened by his reading of German literature
with its abundance of poetry all of which has a mystical flavour. 'There are', he says, 'verses
of Goethe, Holderlin, Novalis, Eichendorff, Nietzsche, George and Rilke which never have
ceased to move me as deeply as they did when I first heard them.'2 The Lutheran insistence on
the doctrine that the finite is capable of the infinite put a theological seal on this nature
mysticism which had been the joint product of his experience and his reading of poetry. His
attitude towards history was just as inevitably romantic. Having spent the earliest years of his
life in some of the most historic places in Germany, Tillich could not avoid having a feeling
for history as a living and ever-present reality. More specifically in his profound appreciation
of the European Middle Ages through which romanticism influenced the intellectual history
of the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries Tillich displays a romantic attitude
towards history. Indeed he freely admits that his theology of history could not have been