CHAPTER V
MORALITY AND SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION:
Harmony, Evil and the Emergence of New Life
In the previous chapter, we saw how the full opening of the Western mind to being came when it surpassed the horizon of change (physics) and the resulting preoccupation with the different types of things, to focus upon the meaning of being or of life itself. To take this as a mere technical adjustment of one's mind set would grandly miss the mark. For, as we began to see in the previous chapter, a new degree of sensibility to being unfolds vast new meaning for human life, which in turn could be expected to have strong reverberations in history.
But might not the converse also be true; namely, could vast historical collisions or repressions enable the mind to open to new dimensions of being and meaning? This is what we will take up in this chapter, shifting from the close reasoning work of classical metaphysics regarding the notion of being, finite and infinite, to the broad flow of human history as a screen on which the dynamics of being can be read, or more properly as a struggle in which the dynamic of being is lived in suffering and triumph.
To do so is also to draw out a new implication of Chapter I regarding cultural tradition. That is, if taken not as dead repetition but as a dynamic process, tradition is not only a context for philosophy but its dynamic process of discovery and implementation. In this light, the philosopher and sage move from remote hermitages in the solitude of nature to the bustling crossroads of the arts and sciences, university and town, nation and world, and, indeed, of this world and the next.
The great challenge to which every philosopher is called to rise is that of relating the seemingly irreconcilable, of healing the ruptures in human life, of opening the present to the future. This task is never accomplished once and for all: if it were, life would no longer be a quest; in our conditions it would be bereft of interest. But the task does change, along with the struggles and the history of the people. For a variety of reasons, some periods are times of great stability or at least of little change. At such times, the role and spirit, if not the horizon, of the philosopher often is restricted to interpreting and explaining social structures and related decisions; discovery and innovation are in danger of being supplanted by ideology; attention shifts from ethics and metaphysics to logic and history.
Long periods of stagnation can so distort human understanding that the trouble they generate creates dynamic tension, which in turn imposes a new and radically pervasive search for meaning from which new insight can emerge. The greater the contraction, the more penetrating and creative the search which follows; the more troubled the times, the more propitious they are for philosophy. Indeed, it is for such times that philosophy is destined, for the very process by which a people emerges from long hibernation requires that they break through artificial external thought boundaries and achieve the vision which can generate new life for their people.
If this be true, then along with contemplating the good, it may be not only practically imperative to acknowledge and adjust to evil, but essential for metaphysics, particularly if metaphysics is not merely a process of constructing theory but the deeply conscious level of life lived with all its vicissitudes and corresponding richness.
This draws us to the burden of this lecture. In chapter I we saw that, rather than ignoring our situatedness in time, hermeneutics shows us how to accept this and grow with it. In chapter II we saw how, rather than reducing the sense of person to the roles one plays, it was crucial to clarify the philosophical principles upon which the dignity of the person is grounded. In chapter III, we saw how, rather than ignoring freedom in favor of harmony, Kant's reflection on the conditions for freedom pointed the way to its transcendent context. In chapter IV, we saw how recognition of the transcendent, rather than diminishing the meaning of human life and reality, vastly enriched it. In a similar manner, in this lecture we will suggest that, rightly understood, even the acknowledgment of evil in human life, rather than diminishing human meaning, enables man to gauge the true dimensions of the struggle in which he is engaged, the frightening emptiness of the abyss which opens beyond him, and the heroism and triumph of the life well lived.
PAUL TIL LICH: LIFE AND TIMES
The thought of Paul Tillich can help us to see this, for he lived through the period of the two world wars, confronted the depths of evil opened by Hitler's Naziism in his own country and was central to articulating the vision of resurrection and renewal in the period of reconstruction that followed.
While preparing for his doctorate in philosophy (1911) and his licentiate in theology (1912), he drew less upon the continuing body of traditional Prot estant thought in the Calv inistic and Lu theran tradition than upon a philosophical combination of ethical humanism and dialectical idealism.
The ethical humanism was that of Ritschl and Troeltsch who had accepted Kant's location of the religious question in the realm of the will and practical reason, rather than in that of the intellect and pure reason. On this basis, religious issues were to be understood according to the religious and ethical personality considered ideal according to the culture of the time.
The dialectical idealism was especially that of F.W. Sch elling, whose collected works Tillich early read in their entirety and wrote upon for his philosophy and theology degrees. In their light, he deepened his appreciation of the divine presence in all things in history, which, in turn, the structures of the dialectic enable one to see as the dynamic expression of the divine. This appreciation of the progressive and developing manifestation of the divine in and through culture stood at the center of Tillich's teaching in the philosophy of religion and culture and theology at the Universities of Berlin, Marburg, and Frankfort during the 1920's.
This was, as well, the root of his adherence to religious socialism, according to which the defeat of Germany at the conclusion of the First World War had cleared away all that was opposed to, or substituted for, God. This prepared the Kairos or moment of time when the divine would be manifested once again, not now in church, but in the people or proletariat. The weakness of this view lay in its repetition of a well known phenomenon extending back to the Fall of the Angels, namely, the creature's refusal to recognize any source of life beyond itself. Its implicit premise was that man, not God, must save man; a little beyond this lay the definitive temptation, namely, to think that man must become God.
Of course, with such a god, man's life soon sinks to an ever more inhuman condition. Thus, all the high hopes were shattered in the early 1930's as the socialist ideal was concretized in the National Socialism of the Nazi party. Where the nation, the race, the people were put in the place of God, what had been looked to as a new manifestation of the divine became its ultimate denial. In this was echoed the experience repeated through history, namely, that man cannot save man. Inevitably, reductive humanisms, man-made utopias, projects to control human history in terms however scientific enclose and then repress the dynamic openness of human freedom: life turns into death.
As this situation became clear, Paul Tillich could not but strongly reject it in his many public speeches throughout Germany, with the result that he was dismissed from the University of Frankfurt when Hitler came to power. Looking back to that time, Tillich sees the developments which bound together the two World Wars as more than merely personal or even national. They spelled the end of ethical humanism. "Neo-Protestantism is dead in Europe. All groups, whether Lutheran, Reformed, or Barthian, consider the last 200 years of Protestant Theology essentially erroneous. The year 1933 finished the period of theological liberalism stemming from Schle iermacher, Ri tschl, and Tro eltsch."
In personal terms, this disillusionment led him to consider becoming a Catholic as the only alternative to "national heathenism." Instead, he came under the influence of Karl Barth's neo-orthodoxy because of its affirmation of God as transcendent. For Tillich, however, this did not mean that culture and history were not significant. The devastating history of the first third of this century confirmed for Tillich the acid existential criticism of meaning developed by Kier kegaard, Nie tzsche, and M arx. But whereas his historical dialectic had seen God as manifested positively through history, now, when history comes to appear as meaningless, the contemporary religious problem becomes how God is manifested through and in the very meaninglessness of history itself.
It is a measure of the penetrating character of this reading by Ti llich of the religious problem of this century that it proved relevant not only to harsh totalitarianisms of Europe, but to the liberal context of North America as well, where, upon his arrival in 1933, he found an analogous crisis. During the deceptive prosperity of the 1920s, there had been a certain religious parallel to the German situation as the search for God was substituted gradually by the impression that the natural progress of the era itself was God or his definitive manifestation. This was especially marked in the Social Gospel Movement which, under the influence of the pragmatism of the John Dewey, had become a relativistic ethical humanism. It reduced the task of theology to generating convictions which need not be Christian or even concerned with God, as long as they were pragmatically efficient and apologetically defensible. The economic depression in 1929 gave the lie to this direction of religious thought.
It was no longer possible to identify God as the next stage of progress. Rather, God had to be found in the negation of values emanating in ever widening circles from the initial economic collapse. To this, the religious perspective which Tillich had begun to elaborate for Europe proved particularly relevant. The Neo-Naturalists had already begun to recall men from mere humanism to a theocentric philosophy of religion. But, unsatisfied with a God understood as a process wholly immanent in the universe, the evolution which Tillich's thought had recently undergone in Europe allowed him to stress the transcendent character of the divine and the essential implications of this for the reformation and redemption of culture.
THE PHILOSOPHICAL CHALLENGE
Paul Til lich laid the groundwork for this by recognizing some basic dualities which open the field of discussion. If we are not trapped in a complete solipsism, then, on the level of thought, we must distinguish subject and object, the one who thinks and what is thought about, and, on the level of being, we must distinguish self and world. Neither idealism not materialism have been successful in reducing one to the other; both subject and object must be recognized and the success of a philosophy of life lies in its ability to reconcile the two. The self is indivisible in itself and distinct from all else; it is unique, unrepeatable, irreplaceable and unexchangeable. But if, on the one hand, the self is considered without its polar element of world with which to situate the individual and orient his life, then all becomes isolated and arbitrary; there can be no meaningful participation of knower and known, and actions become random and willful. If, on the other hand, the social unity is taken as an end in itself without regard for the individual, its goals are eviscerated and it itself becomes vicious. Reconciling both self and world is the key to human success or failure.
The life of philosophy, as of man himself, is the work of identifying these polar elements (thesis), seeing how, by their falling apart, life becomes destructive (antithesis), and how they can be reconciled (synthesis). In religious terms, the thesis is the paradise of basic natures, the antithesis is the Fall into sin and death, the synthesis is resurrection and new life. In terms of metaphysics, the three are successively the stage of essence or nature, of existence, and of their reconciliation in a dynamic harmony of being.
In these terms, Paul Tillich was able to analyze the crisis through which he had passed in Germany and into which he entered in America, and to draw out the characteristics which must pertain to any body of contemporary religious thought. As religious, it would have to understand the presence of God in all things and their relation to Him. In contrast to the naturalists and humanists, his strong appreciation of the need for a transcendent dimension which inspires and empowers man excludes philosophy being an adequate statement of religious thought. If, however, the transcendent be considered an answer, it is the answer to a question constituted by the crisis which is the present existential situation. The analysis of this crisis and the identification of this question of the ultimate is the proper task of philosophy. Theology cannot become imperial, for it exists in a situation of co-relation with philosophy and as the answer to philosophy's most profound questions of being and meaning.
This reflects Tillich's own experience, which was archetypal for that of the 20th century. West and East, people have experienced significant disillusionment with their earlier efforts to create a human paradise. Previous hopes and commitments have been shattered by the course of events; the critiques of Solzhenitsyn strike home both in societies where abundance has generated a hedonism which atrophies the spirit and in societies where inability to produce bespeaks long distortion and suppression of this same spirit. As with Tillich's experience of National Socialism, we face a situation in which the previous contexts of meaning have crumbled. Certainly, this is not the time to attempt to construct a new ideology. Instead, the example of Tillich suggests that we can learn from disillusionment itself as the major experience of the present. By asking what is thereby made manifest to human awareness, we may be able to open to the foundations upon which social life can be reconstructed.
This can be seen also as a matter of transcending the previous human horizons of subject and object. As noted by K ant in his Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, such objective patterns of cause and effect allow for scientific precision and technical manipulation, but once established as a total horizon they become reductionist and repressive of the human spirit. More recent theory shows that, unless this horizon is transcended, any critique merely rearranges the dilemma in a cognitive loop which has no exit. Liberation inevitably becomes oppression once again and man has neither hope nor salvation. What is required is a way of transcending this horizon to a meta-critique which opens a new, deeper and more true way to view life. Tillich's reworking of the dialectic suggests how this can occur and opens a new and liberating insight concerning the ground of being present to our consciousness as our ultimate concern. His dialectic shows how this relates to the experience of meaninglessness and thereby plays a truly redemptive role, enabling mankind once again to be creative in facing the problems of its actual historical circumstances.
Paul Tillich was much concerned with the relation between subject and object both in its contemporary modality and in its fundamental nature. There has been a general consensus that the great tragedy of recent times has been the subjection of man to the objects he produces, reducing him to the state of an impersonal object. Below, we will be able to follow more closely the analysis of this contemporary situation. Tillich sees this as the basic ontological structure of the self-world relation because it is the presupposition of ontological investigation, without itself being able to be deduced from any prior unity. Idealism has been no more successful in deriving the object from the subject than earlier naturalisms had been in reducing the subject to the state of a physical object. The polarity of the self-world or subject-object structure, then, "cannot be derived. It must be accepted."
The polar relation of these elements assumes varied nuances according to the nature of the reality under consideration. This provides a very sensitive norm for evaluating any system of thought, for the strength and weaknesses of a philosophy will appear clearly from the degree of its success in conciliating the twin poles of subject and object in its own area. Tillich applies this norm in the form of the polar notions of individualization and participation to various types of religious thought. Following his evaluation will provide us with insight into the requirements for authentic religion and reveal the way in which he transforms the elements of classical Christian thought in the constructions of his own contemporary religious philosophy.
While neither polar notion can be fully realized without the other, individualization will be analyzed first. This element is implied in the constitution of every being as a self and points to the fact that it is particular and indivisible. As particular, the self maintains an identity separate from all else and opposite to anything to which it might be related. As indivisible it maintains its identity by retaining the integrity of its own self center, much as a mathematical point resists partition. One can hear the traditional definition of the person in these notions, which Tillich does not fail to extend to the temporal order, making self-affirmation something unique, unrepeatable and irreplaceable. The infinite value of every human person is a consequence of this "ontological self-affirmation as an indivisible, unexchangeable self."
While this individuality is an indispensable element in reality, it is a grave error to consider it without its polar element of participation. An exclusive insistence on the particular and unrepeatable brings with it the nominalistic breakdown in the philosophy of essence. This breakdown, in turn, becomes the source of a number of philosophical positions which have greatly influenced religious ideas. Some of the more important nominalist consequences are that "only the individual has ontological reality," that the divine will is random and that finite beings are radically contingent.
For lack of any natural order, the epistemological expression of this nominalistic ontology is referred to by Max Scheler as controlling knowledge, by which the object must be transformed into a completely conditioned and calculable "thing" to be studied with detached analysis by empirical methods. The determination of ethical ends is outside the competency of this knowledge which restricts itself to the consideration of means and receives its ends from such nonrational sources as positive tradition or arbitrary decision. Such nominalistic results derive from the development of individuation without its polar element of participation.
The insufficiency of this thought is realized by Tillich. He considers pure nominalism to be untenable because its radical individualism renders impossible the mutual participation of the knower and the known. Thus, the various forms of liberalism which have emphasized individualization almost exclusively have tended by that very fact to cut themselves off from all meaningful contact with the divine. A mitigated, but none the less dangerous, form of this is to make of God an object for us as subjects. Though logical predication cannot avoid doing this, it is necessary to reject its implied ontological negation of God's holiness and his reduction to simply an object beside oneself as subject, merely one being among others.
At no time, however, has the exaggerated stress on individualization appeared to be as problematic as in the context of modern meaninglessness after neo-Protestantism. Built upon biblical criticism and the Ritschlian theological synthesis of modern naturalism and historicism, it was shattered in its social foundations by M arx, in its moral grounds by Ni etzsche and in its religious basis by Kierkegaard. Social crises of this century shattered even the structures with which man had attempted to reconstruct these foundations.
More than ever, the question became no longer which values are true, but "the whole system of values and meanings in which one lived." The traditional issues of individual sin and forgiveness lost their meaning because the question had become the very possibility of meaning itself. The challenge facing mankind became that of finding the divine through nonbeing in its most radical form, namely, the anxiety of doubt and meaninglessness.
Despite this history of its exaggerations, however, individualization remains indispensable in providing the terms of the relation of man to God. But, in order for this relationship to be positive, the corresponding element of participation must also be present. Participation points to "an element of identity in that which is different or of a togetherness of that which is separated, whether it is the identity of the same enterprise, or the identity of the same universal or of the same whole of which one is a part, in each case participation implies identity."
The task of participation is twofold. First, it gives meaning and content to the individual, keeping it from being an empty form. Further, it is an essential perfection, and, hence, proportionate to the being and its act. Thus, when the individual has the character of a person, participation achieves the perfect form of communion. Second, participation provides the real basis for unity with God by expressing the presence of the divine. No religion can be without this without ceasing to be a religion and being reduced to a secular movement of political, educational or scientific activism, for it is the very relationship to the divine which is expressed by the notion of participation.
Tragically, however, this factor of participation turns into oppression--and this is the burden of the second phase or antithesis in his dialectic--when it is understood entirely in terms of relations between self-centered and limited persons as things. Then the unity between persons can be the product only of the imposition by one person upon another or of some even less personal group or structure. In the personal experience of Tillich, it was precisely National Socialism which had to be transcended, but other forms of forced and unilateral emphasis upon social participation have also marked the 20th century.
The grounds for this tragic polarization of individualization and participation is laid in Tillich's thesis; its tragic mode appears as the antithesis; his synthesis of the two points the way to reconstruction as true resurrection.
THE THESIS
The original and varied elements which Paul Ti llich intends to integrate in his philosophy stand in his thought as does the state of paradise in the biblical creation story. This is taken, however, in a new sense, for "the doctrine of creation is not the story of an event which took place `once upon a time,' but the basic description of the relation between God and the world." This includes what can be known of God, the production of His finite effects ex nihilo, and the response of man from this situation of meaninglessness. Tillich expresses the dynamic interrelationship of these in terms of an existential dialectic which considers the problems and contradictions of present day existence at a depth at which the ontological principles of essence and existence and the epistemological principles of subject and object can be correlated.
A complete discussion of the relation of essence to existence is identical with the entire theological system. The distinction between essence and existence, which, religiously speaking, is the distinction between the created and the actual world, is the backbone of the whole body of theological thought. It must be elaborated in every part of the theological system.
It was observed at the beginning that Tillich insists on the polarity of subject and object as the point of departure for his analysis of reality because both are presupposed for the ontological question. But, if they provide his point of departure in a first approach to the reality of essence or essence of reality, he leaves no doubt that he shares the modern concern to proceed to a point of identity where the alienation of subject and object is overcome. This is the result of the observation that man has been reduced to the status of a thing by allowing himself to be subjected to the objects he produces. The strongest statement of this situation was made by Nietzsche, but the best may be Marx's description of the reduction of the worker to a commodity. Reality must not be simply identified with objective being, for man must participate in some deeper principle or lose his value and individuality. To identify reality with subjective being or consciousness, however, would be equally insufficient, for the subject is determined by its contrast with object. Consequently, what is sought is a level of reality which is beyond this dichotomy of subject and object, grounding and unifying the value of both.
The need for a point of identity and its function is better appreciated as one proceeds beyond the subject-object relationship to the investigation of either knowledge or being. "This point of procedure in every analysis of experience and every concept of a system of reality must be the point where subject and object are at one and the same place." Thus, the analysis of experience directs one's attention to the logos which is the element of form, of meaning and of structure. In the knowing subject or self, the logos is called subjective reason and makes self a centered structure. Correspondingly, in the known object or world, it is called objective reason and makes world a structured whole.
Though there is nothing beyond the logos structure of being, it is possible to conceive the relation between the rational structures of mind and reality in a number of ways. Four of these possibilities are represented by realism, idealism, pluralism and monism, but what is most striking is that all philosophers have held an identity or at least an analogy between the logos of the mind and that of the world. Successful scientific planning and prediction provide continual pragmatic proof of this identity.
The philosophical mind, however, is not satisfied with the mere affirmation, or even the confirmation of the fact. There arises the problem of why there should be this correspondence of the logos in the subject with that of reality as a whole. This can be solved only if the logos is primarily the structure of the one principle of all, that is, of divine life, as well as the principle of its self-manifestation. Then it is the medium of creation, bridging "between the silent abyss of being and the fullness of concrete individualized, self-related beings." The identity or analogy of the rational structures of mind and of reality will follow from the fact that both have been mediated through the same identical divine logos.
In this way, "reason in both its objective and subjective structures points to something which appears in these structures but which transcends them in power and meaning." Lo gos becomes the point of identity between God, self and world. Of these three, the logos of G od is central and is participated in by self and world as they acquire their being. Thus, the logos of reason gives us a first introduction to the concept Tillich has of God overcoming the separation of subject and object to provide a deeper synthesis of the reality of both.
This conclusion of the analysis of experience has definite implications for an analysis of being, because the identity is not merely an external similarity of two things to a third without a basis in the things themselves. The point of identification of subject and object is the divine, which is found within beings. The term "Being itself" is the only nonsymbolic expression of the divine (though in relation to our consciousness this is termed the ultimate concern). God is within beings as their power of being--as an analytic dimension in the structure of reality. As such, he is the "substance", appearing in every rational structure; the creative "ground" in every rational creation; the "abyss", unable to be exhausted by any creation or totality of creations; the "infinite potentiality of being and meaning", pouring himself into the rational structures of mind and reality to actualize and transform them. God is, then, the ground not only of truth, but of being as well; indeed, the divine is able to be the ground of truth precisely inasmuch as it is the ground of being.
These ideas have a long history in the mind of man. In the distant past the Upa nishads viewed the Brahman-atman both cosmically as the all-inclusive, unconditioned ground of the universe from which conditioned beings emanate, and, acosmically, as the reality of which the universe is but an appearance. The absolute is the "not this, not this" (neti), "the Real of the real" (styasya satyam). A similar line of thought can be traced through Plato and Augustine to the medieval Franciscans and Nicholas of Cusa. Tillich is fond of relating his thought to these classical sources.
The proximate referent of his thought in positing this ontological principle of identity beyond subject and object is Schelling. At the very first, Schelling agreed with Fichte in making the "Absolute Ego" of consciousness the ultimate principle and reality. It is this consciousness which dialectically "becomes" the world of nature. But, on further consideration, Sche lling failed to see the particular connection between the infinite Ego and the finite object. For this reason, he moved the "Absolute Ego" from the conscious side of the dichotomy to a central, neutral position between and prior to both objectivity and subjectivity. Thus, the Absolute is called not "Ego" but "the Unconditional" and "Identity", and the idealism no longer subjective, but ontological. Tillich readily accepted this insight of the early Schelling and, therefore, traced the line of his thought in between, but distinct from both the subjective idealism of Fichte and the objective realism of Hobbes. What is important is that neither side of the polarity be eliminated, both must be maintained. For this, there is required an Unconditional, as the ground equally of subject and object.
Two important specifications must be added to this notion of a divine depth dimension beyond subject and object. One regards the incapacity of limited beings to exhaust or even adequately to represent the divine: this implies the radical uniqueness of the divine. The other concerns the way God is manifested in the essence of finite beings: this points to the way they participate in the divine.
The first of these specifications, which Tillich is careful to make concerning this point of identity of subject and object, is that it cannot be grasped exhaustively by mind nor replicated completely by things, that is, that it is gnostically incomprehensible and ontologically inexhaustible, the former reflecting the latter. "This power of being is the prius which precedes all special contents logically and ontologically." It is not even identified with the totality of things. For this reason, the divine is termed the "abyss", because it cannot be exhausted in any creation or totality of creations.
Human intuition of the divine always has distinguished between the abyss of the divine (the element of power) and the fullness of its content (the element of meaning), between the divine depth and the divine logos. The first principle is the basis of Godhead, that which makes God. It is the root of his majesty, the unapproachable intensity of his being, the inexhaustible ground of being in which everything has its origin. It is the power of being infinitely resisting nonbeing, giving the power of being to everything that is.
__s21 This position of the divine as the inexhaustible depth dimension of reality is the basis of the distinction and individualization of God in relation to creatures. As infinite being and truth, the divine is beyond the separation of subject and object, self and world, and makes possible, in principle, a deeper realization of both. In the realm of being, it implies what Tillich calls the Protestant principle, namely, the protest against any thing being raised to the position of the divine. In his own experience, it extended particularly to the state, for he had to extricate himself from the terrible power of national socialism's claim to a totalism which by definition left no room for human freedom. This protest extends as well to any creation of the church, including the biblical writings which must not be identified with the divine ground in any way. No bearer of the holy may be permitted to claim absolute status for itself.
In the order of knowledge, the inexhaustible character of the divine implies that, if man is to proceed beyond finite realities to an awareness of what is truly divine, he must leave behind the rational categories of technical reason, for such categories limit the infinite. They make God an object, "a" being among others, rather than Being Itself. For this reason, G od cannot be conceptualized. To say that God is the depth of reason is to refuse to make him another field of reason. In fact, he precedes the structures of reason and gives them their inexhaustible quality precisely because he can never be adequately contained in them. Schelling has termed the divine the Unvordenkliche, because it is "that before which thinking cannot penetrate." It was the error of idealism to think that this could ever be completely reduced to rational forms.
Tillich is protected from this error by his basic ontological image of the various levels of reality. "There are levels of reality of great difference, and . . . these different levels demand different approaches and different languages." The divine is the deepest of these levels and consequently must be known and expressed in a manner quite different from that of ordinary knowledge and discourse. It is to this same fact that Till ich is referring when he introduces the dialectical relationship between these levels and speaks of the divine as the prius. This suggests that it will be necessary to proceed beyond conceptualization to an intuitive, personal awareness of the divine. This will be described below, but one thing is already clear. Since the categories are the basis for the objective element in knowledge and the means by which it is made equally available to the many minds, intuitive awareness will have to be subjective and individual.
The other specification made by Tillich concerning the depth dimension regards its manifestation in the essences of finite beings. The notion of essence is found in some form in practically all philosophers, but classically in Plato and Aristotle. Plato attempted to solve the problem of unity and separation in knowledge by the myth of the original union of the soul with the essences or ideas. Recollection and reunion take place later and in varying degrees. Tillich stresses that, in Plato, the unity of soul and ideas is never completely destroyed. Although the particular object is strange as such, it contains essential structures "with which the cognitive subject is essentially united and which it can remember."
Aristotle retains the notion of essence as providing the power of being: essence is the quality and structure in which being participates. But this is still potential, whereas the real is actual. Tillich accepts the Aristotelian position in these general terms and then uses it in order to develop his conception of creation. The divine was described above as the inexhaustible; in order for this to be creative an element of meaning and structure must be added. This is the second divine principle, the logos, which makes the divine distinguishable, definite and finite. The third principle is the Spi rit "in whom God `goes out from' himself; the Spirit proceeds from the divine ground. He gives actuality to that which is potential in the divine ground. . . . The finite is posited as finite within the process of the divine life, but it is reunited with the infinite within the same process."
A second approach to the thesis of Tillich's dialectic is phenomenological. This approach notes that we are never indifferent to things, simply recording the situation as does a light or sound meter. Rather, we judge the situation and react according as it reflects or falls away from what it should be. This fact makes manifest essence or logos in its normative sense. It is the way things should be, the norm of their perfection. Our response to essence is the heart of our efforts to protect and promote life; it is in this that we are basically and passionately engaged. Hence, by looking into our hearts and identifying their basic interests and concerns--our ultimate concern--we discover the most basic reality at this stage of the dialectic.
In these terms, Tillich expresses the positive side of the dialectical relationship of the essences of finite beings to the divine. He shows how these essences can contain, without exhausting, the power of being, for God remains this power. As exclusively positive, these might be said to express only the first elements of creation, that they remain, as it were, in a state of dreaming innocence within the divine life from which they must awaken to actualize and realize themselves. Creation is fulfilled in the self-realization by which the limited beings leave the ground of being to "stand upon" it. Whatever we shall say in the negative section about this moment of separation, the element of essence is never completely lost, for "if it were lost, mind as well as reality would have been destroyed in the very moment of their coming into existence." It is the retention of this positive element of essence that provides the radical foundation for participation by limited beings in the divine and their capacity for pointing to the infinite power of being and depth of reason. As mentioned in the first section, such participation in the divine being and some awareness thereof is an absolute prerequisite for any religion.
In this first or positive stage in Dr. Tillich's dialectic, by placing the divine as the point of identity beyond both subject and object, he has introduced both elements according to which he evaluated previous religious philosophies. The element of participation so necessary for any religion has appeared and, along with it, the element of individuation. We must now look at Tillich's attempt in the second or negative stage of his dialectic to see both of these in existential dissolution through a unilateral process of individualization. It will remain for the third phase of the dialectic, the synthesis, to develop a contemporary understanding of the restoration of person and society as free participations in the divine.
THE ANTITHESIS
Ti llich turns to the second phase of his dialectic in order to analyze the basic infinite-finite structure by a form of individualization. Its contemporary nature lies in its particular relation to nonbeing. Nonbeing is had in God, where it dialectically drives being out of its seclusion to make God living. But in God it is dialectically overcome, thus placing being itself beyond the polarity of the finite and the infinite negation of the finite. In beings less than God this nonbeing is not overcome. The classical statement, creatio ex nihilo means that the creature "must take over what might be called `the heritage of nonbeing'," which has, along with its participation in being, its "heritage of Being." "Everything which" participates in the power of being is `mixed' with nonbeing. It is being in the process of coming from and going toward nonbeing." This is finite being.
The radical realism of this view contrasts starkly with all social utopias. Not only are these man-made and, hence, subject to objectifying the subject, but they fail adequately to recognize the essential character of non-being in human life. This cannot be encountered and overcome unless it is first recognized, and it is characteristic of the dialectic of Tillich, in contrast to that of Hegel and the utopic goal of Marx, that nonbeing pertains to the human condition, and even to the divine. To deny it is to be subject to it; whereas to recognize it first and then reconcile it is the path of liberation. The second stage of Tillich's dialectic, the antithesis, is this recognition.
It is interesting that when Desc artes wished to drive home his highly intellectual analysis of the self he followed up with the imaginative example of the ball of wax. Tillich draws on the biblical myth of the Fall to do the same for his notion of nonbeing, thereby enabling one to see its concrete meaning in the struggle to realize human freedom. He shuns the Hegelian understanding of the antithesis as nonbeing dialectically expressing being, for then existence would be simply a step in the expression of essence. In contrast, profound observation of the modern world, especially of the cataclysm of the First World War, forced home the point that reality is also the contradiction of essence. Some such distinction of essence and existence is presupposed by any philosophy which considers the ideal as against the real, truth against error or good against evil.
This has been expressed by the concept of estrangement taken from Hegel's earlier philosophy and applied to the individual by Kierke gaard, to society by M arx, and to life, as such, by Schopenhauer and Ni etzsche. In fact, since the later period of Schelling, it has been commonplace for a whole series of philosophers and artists to describe the world as one of fragments, a disrupted unity. This implies that individualization has become excessive and led to a loneliness of man before his fellow men and before God. This, in turn, drives one into inner experience where one is still further isolated from one's world. The presupposition of this tragic nature of man is his transcendent Fall.
How is this F all with its existential estrangement to be understood? First, its possibility is traced to man's finite freedom. In this state in which finite man is excluded from the infinity to which he belongs freedom gives him the capacity to contradict himself and his essential nature. Furthermore, the fact that he is aware of this finitude, of the threat from nonbeing, adds the note of anxiety to freedom, producing a drive toward the transition into existence. Rooted in his finitude and expressed in his anxiety, once this freedom is aroused, man experiences the threat either of not actualizing his potencies and thus not fulfilling himself, or of actualizing them, knowing that he will not choose according to the norms and values in which his essential nature expresses itself. In either case he is bound to lose himself and his freedom.
The finite nature of man's freedom implies an opposite pole, called destiny, which applies even to the freedom of self-contradiction. Freedom "is possible only within the context of the universal transition from essence to existence" and every isolated act is embedded in the universal destiny of existence. This means that the estrangement of man from his essential nature has two characteristics, the one tragic coming from destiny, the other moral (guilt) coming from freedom. Of itself, destiny connotes universality, for the Fall is the presupposition of existence and there is no existence before or without it. Hence, everything that exists participates in the Fall with its twin character of tragedy and guilt. This applies to every man, every act of man, and every part of nature as well.
The conciliation of the absolute universality of the Fall with the freedom it presupposes is one of those problems which are never really solved because it is part of the human condition which it enlightens. The extension of guilt to nature seems reinforced by evolutionary theories and depth psychology, but how the inevitability and the freedom of estrangement are to be reconciled remains an enigma. In one statement, Tillich affirms the necessity of something in finite freedom for which we are responsible and which makes the Fall unavoidable. In another work, he considers estrangement to be an original fact with "the character of a leap and not of structural necessity." Despite these difficulties, in explaining how man's estrangement is free, Tillich clearly presents it as the ontological realization of the Fall of mankind.
This negative phase in the dialectic is mediated to the level of consciousness by the general, and presently acute, phenomenon of anxiety which arises from the nonbeing in finite reality. "The first statement about the nature of anxiety is this: anxiety is the state in which a being is aware of its possible nonbeing." It is, in fact, the expression of finitude from the inside. As such, it is not a mere psychological quality but an ontological one, present wherever finitude and its threat of nonbeing are found. Anxiety is then simply inescapable for finite beings. Were it a particular object, it might be feared directly, attacked and overcome. But as nothingness is not an `object' there is no way for the finite to overcome nonbeing. Thus anxiety lies within man at all times. This omnipresent ontological anxiety can be aroused at any time even without a situation of fear, for the emotional element is but an indication of the perverse manner in which finite being is penetrated by the threat of absolute separation from its positive element of infinity, that is, with the threat of annihilating nothingness.pp. 211-14.
The nonbeing of finitude and estrangement is present on each level of being and in three ways: ontic, spiritual and moral. This produces three corresponding types or characteristics of anxiety. Ontic anxiety is the awareness that our basic self-affirmation as beings is threatened proximately by fate, the decided contingency of our position, and ultimately by death. Spiritual anxiety is the awareness of the emptiness of the concrete content of our particular beliefs and, even more, the awareness of the loss of a spiritual center of meaning resulting in ultimate meaninglessness in which "not even the meaningfulness of a serious question of meaning is left for him."p. 74. Moral anxiety is the awareness that in virtue of that very freedom by which one is human he continually chooses against the fulfillment of his destiny and the actualization of his essential nature, thus adding the element of guilt.
All three elements of anxiety-- death, meaninglessness and guilt--combine to produce despair, the ultimate or "boundary" situation. One element or another may stand out more clearly for various people or in various situations, but all three are inescapably present. It is guilt that seals Sartre's No Exit, for if there were but the nonbeing of death and meaninglessness, man could affirm both his ontic and his spiritual meaning by his own act of voluntary death. But guilt makes all this impossible. "Guilt and condemnation are qualitatively, not quantitatively, infinite." They point to the dimension of the ultimate and the unconditional from which we have become estranged through our own responsible actions. In this way, Tillich's contemporary understanding of the situation of loneliness and despair is ultimately pervaded by a sense of guilt.
Nonbeing extends beyond being to knowledge. After recognizing that existence is both the appearance and the contradiction of essence, he adds that "our thinking is a part of our existence and shares the fate that human existence contradicts its true nature." Reason is effected by the nonbeing of finitude and estrangement. Under the conditions of existence, it is torn by internal conflicts and estranged from its depth and ground.
Another note of the existential situation of knowledge is its inclusion of actualized freedom. This not only separates thought and being, but holds them apart. There results a special kind of truth, one which is attained, not in an absolute standpoint at the end of history, but in the situation of the knower: subjectivity becomes the hallmark of truth. Its contemporary tragic character is due to the fact that it results from separation and despair. "Truth is just that subjectivity which does not disregard its despair, its exclusion from the objective world of essence, but which holds to it passionately."
Throughout this negative stage of the dialectic, there remains the original positive element, the bond to the divine. "Man is never cut off from the ground of being, not even in the state of condemnation," for really to lose the foundation of one's being would be utter annihilation. This essential insight of Hegel regarding sublation would appear to have been tragically omitted by Marx who, in his concern for social transformation, understood all in terms of technical reason focused upon negation. But, if what is negated is the power of being upon which a human life and a people's culture have been based, then the possibilities of reconstruction are radically undermined and left without foundation. With no source of meaning, life not only loses meaning but is condemned to remain thus. Neither negation nor negation of negation will suffice. The tragedy which Tillich brings to light is that, despite the presence of the power of being, in this state of existence man does not actualize, but contradicts the essential manifestation of his divine ground.
This is more than individualization; it is the tragically guilty estrangement of being and knowing from the divine, and from ourselves as images of the divine. Thus, Tillich's systematic analysis of the predicament of modern man manifests the true dimensions of the exaggeration of individualization experienced as a sense of loneliness and expressed theologically as the Fall of man. It does this in the contemporary context of meaninglessness by questioning not only the supports of the previous generations, but the very meaning of support. If this questioning be sufficiently radical, it may open the way to a rediscovery of the basis not only for a reordering or restructuring, but for radical reconstruction.
THE SYNTHESIS
The first stage of Tillich's existential dialectic had presented the essential or potential state of finite reality in union with the divine. The second or negative moment of this dialectic placed individualization in its present context of meaninglessness. This is a powerful and profound expression of the difficulty in actualizing human dignity, which is identically the element of union or participation in the divine which is the essence of religion. Let us see how the third stage attempts to provide this element in a contemporary fashion.
Since existential separation and disruption leaves man opaque to the divine, Tillich will not allow the divine to be derived from an analysis of human experience: man cannot save himself. If God is to be the answer to the existential question of man, he must come "to human existence from beyond it"; the divine depth must break through in particular things and particular circumstances. This is the phenomenon of revelation in which the essential power of natural objects is delivered from the bondage of its existential contradiction, so that the finite thing or situation participates in the power of the ultimate.
In this way, revelation provides more than a mere representation of the divine; it opens levels of mind and of reality hidden till now and produces the experience of the divine which is the most profound of these levels. The appearance of the divine varies according to the particular situation. Experienced in correlation with the threat of nonbeing, God has the form of the "infinite power of being resisting nonbeing," that is, he is Being Itself. As the answer to the question in the form of anxiety, God is "the ground of courage." Each is a form of the particular participation in the divine which takes place in this situation. As this same participation is the basis for symbols of the divine, these differ in mode and duration depending upon the situation.
For a better understanding of the contemporary nature of Tillich's religious philosophy, it is necessary to investigate further his development of the situation of revelation in the context of meaninglessness. As cognitive, this encounter includes two elements. One is objective and termed a miracle or sign-event; the other is subjective and named ecstasy and inspiration. The objective and the subjective are so strictly correlated that one cannot be had without the other: revelation is the truth only for the one who is grasped by the divine presence.
Miracle does not mean a supernatural interference with the natural structure of events. To make this clear Tillich prefers the term `sign-event', as signifying that which produces numinous astonishment in Rudolph Otto's sense of that which is connected with the presence of the divine. Such a sign-event can be realized in the context of meaninglessness because it presupposes the stigma of nonbeing, the disruptive tensions driving toward man's complete annihilation. In particular situations, this stigma becomes evident and manifests the negative side of the mystery of God, the abyss. However, such situations also imply the positive side of the mystery of God, for their very reality manifests the divine ground and power of being over which nonbeing is not completely victorious.
This explains the characteristics which Tillich attributes to a miracle. He speaks of a miracle as "an event which is astonishing, unusual, shaking, without contradicting the rational structure of reality; . . . an event which points to the mystery of being, expressing its relation to us in a definite way; . . . an occurrence which is received as a sign-event in an ecstatic experience." The subjective element pertains to the very nature of a miracle. Thus, even a person who later learns about the sign-event must share in the ecstasy if he is to have more than a report about the belief of another. An objective miracle would be a contradiction in terms.
This subjective element of ecstasy, or "standing outside one's self", is the very etymology of the term itself. It indicates a state in which the mind transcends its ordinary situation, its subject-object structure. Miracle was seen to be negatively dependent on the stigma of nonbeing. In the mind, what corresponded to this stigma was the shock of nonbeing, the anxiety of death, meaninglessness and guilt. These tend to disrupt the normal balance of the mind, to shake it in its structure and to force it to its boundaries where it openly faces nonbeing. There it is thrown back upon itself.
This might be useful in the interpretation of the history of the last century. For in facing the structural contradictions of his time, Marx took just this route. Seeing them as a call to man to save himself, he turned against all else as an opiate, and thereby opened the way for a new radicalization of the conflict of subject and object. Once objectified in his work, now man would be totally objectified by society; family bonds would be intentionally subverted; and the sense of personal dignity would be annihilated before the state which wished to be all. Tillich's dialectic points to the fact that, when forced to its extreme situation, to the very limit of human possibilities, the mind experiences an all pervading "no." There, face to face with the meaninglessness and despair which one must recognize if one is serious about anything at all, one is grasped by mystery. To acknowledge meaninglessness even in an act of despair is itself a meaningful act, for it could be done only on the power of the being it negates. In this way, the reality of a transcending power is manifested within man.
In a radically contemporary mode, this is the expression within human consciousness of the classical theme of the non-ultimacy of that which is limited and contingent. Anything perceived as object opposed to subject must be limited and not all-sufficient; but this very perception bespeaks as its basis that which is self-sufficient and absolute.
This is not natural revelation whereby reason grasps God whenever it wills. Tillich takes an extra step, noting that the object-subject dichotomy which characterized the human mind enables it to recognize its contradictions, but not to resolve them. Natural knowledge of self and world can lead to the question of the ground of being and reason, but, as estranged in the state of existence, it cannot answer the question. For this God must grasp man, which is revelation. The power of being is present in the affirmation of meaninglessness and in the affirmation of ourselves as facing meaninglessness; it affirms itself in one in spite of nonbeing.
In true ecstasy, one receives ultimate power by the presence of the ultimate which breaks through the contradictions of existence where and when it will. It is God who determines the circumstances and the degree in which he will be participated. The effect of this work and its sign is love, for, when the contradictions of the state of existence are overcome so that they are no longer the ultimate horizon, reunion and social healing, cooperation and creativity become possible.
Dr. Tillich calls the cognitive aspect of ecstasy inspiration. In what concerns the divine, he replaces the word knowledge by awareness. This is not concerned with new objects, which would invade reason with a strange body of knowledge that could not be assimilated, and, hence, would destroy its rational structure. Rather, that which is opened to man is a new dimension of being participated in by all while still retaining its transcendence.
It matters little that the contemporary situation of skepticism and meaninglessness has removed all possibility of content for this act. What is important is that we have been grasped by that which answers the ultimate question of our very being, our unconditional and ultimate concern. This indeed, is Tillich's phenomenological description of God. "Only certain is the ultimacy as ultimacy." The ultimate concern provides the place at which the faith by which there is belief (fides qua creditur) and the faith that is believed (fides quae creditur) are identified.
It is here that the difference between subject and object disappears. The source of our faith is present as both subject and object in a way that is beyond both of them. The absence of this dichotomy is the reason why Tillich refuses to speak of knowledge here and uses instead the term `awareness'. He compares it to the mystic's notion of the knowledge God has of Himself, the truth itself of St. Augustine. It is absolutely certain, but the identity of subject and object means that it is also absolutely personal. Consequently, this experience of the ultimate cannot be directly received from others: revelation is something which we ourselves must live.
In this experience, it is necessary to distinguish the point of immediate awareness from its breadth of content. The point of awareness is expressed in what Tillich refers to as the ontological principle: "Man is immediately aware of something unconditional which is the prius of the interaction and separation of both subject and object, both theoretically and practically." He has no doubt about the certainty of this point, although nonsymbolically he can say only that this is being itself. However, in revelation he has experienced not only its reality but its relation to him. He expresses the combination of these in the metaphorical terms of ground and abyss of being, power of being, ultimate and unconditional concern.
Generally, this point is experienced in a special situation and in a special form; the ultimate concern is made concrete in some one thing. It may, for instance, be the nation, a god or the God of the Bible. This concrete content of our act of belief differs from ultimacy as ultimacy in that it is not immediately evident. Since it remains within the subject-object dichotomy, its acceptance as ultimate requires an act of courage and venturing faith. The certainty we have about the breadth of concrete content is then only conditional. Should time reveal this content to be finite, our faith will still have been an authentic contact with the unconditional itself, only the concrete expression will have been deficient.
This implies two correlated elements in man's act of faith. One is that of certainty concerning one's own being as related to something ultimate and unconditional. The other is that of risk, of surrendering to a concern which is not really ultimate and may be destructive if taken as if it were. The risk arises necessarily in the state of existence where both reason and objects are not only finite, but separated from their ground. This places an element of doubt in faith which is neither of the methodological variety found in the scientist, nor of the transitory type often had by the skeptic. Rather, the doubt of faith is existential, an awareness of the lasting element of insecurity. Nevertheless, this doubt can be accepted and overcome in spite of itself by an act of courage which affirms the reality of God. Faith remains the one state of ultimate concern, but, as such, it subsumes certainty concerning both the unconditional and existential doubt.
Can a system with such uncertainty concerning concrete realities still be called a realism? Tillich believes that it can, but only if it is specified as a belief-ful or self-transcending realism. In this, the really real--the ground and power of everything real--is grasped in and through a concrete historical situation. Hence, the value of the present moment which has become transparent for its ground is, paradoxically, both all and nothing. In itself, it is not infinite and "the more it is seen in the light of the ultimate power, the more it appears as questionable and void of lasting significance." The appearance of self-subsistence gradually melts away. But, by this very fact, the ground and power of the present reality becomes evident. The concrete situation becomes the onomous and the infinite depth and eternal significance of the present is revealed in an ecstatic experience.
It would be a mistake, however, to think of this as something other-worldly, strange or uncomfortable. It is ecstatic in the sense of going beyond the usual surface observations and calculations of our initial impressions and scientific calculations, but what it reveals is the profundity of our unity with colleagues, neighbors and, indeed, with all mankind. Rather, then, than generating a sense of estrangement, its sign is the way in which it enables one to see others as friends and to live comfortably with them. As ethnic and cultural difference emerge, along with the freedom of each people to be themselves, this work of the Spirit which is characteristic of Tillich's dialectic comes to be seen in its radical importance for social life.
THEOLOGICAL IMPLICATIONS
Up to this point, the positive exposition of Tillich's thought could have been developed without special relation to Christianity. However, he sees in his system the need for a central manifestation of God both to serve as a point of over-all unity and to conquer definitively the contradictions of existence. It is here that Tillich introduces Christ as the final revelation. We shall present this aspect of his system briefly in order to indicate the direction taken by his thought as it enters the properly theological realm.
Since reason remains finite and retains its state of existence even after receiving revelation, new difficulties continue to arise. The human tendency to oppose subject and object and to reduce subjects to objects with all its corrosive, repressive and dehumanizing effects was broken in its final power and the conflicts of reason were replaced by reconciliation once man's total structure was grasped by its ultimate concern and opened to the ground of being. Still, as old habits die hard their corruptive effects, though conquered, are not removed. Hence, they are able to rise again and attack even the elements of revelation. The bearers of revelation can become mistaken for the ultimate itself, thereby making even faith idolatrous. Furthermore, the emergence of the subject-object horizon to dominance can lead to a loss of the ecstatic, transcending power of reason. In this case, reason forgets that it is but an instrument for awareness of the ultimate and tends itself to become an ultimate.
Fortunately, these distortions of faith and reason can be definitively conquered; the means of this victory is called final revelation. It has various criteria, but all are bound up with the qualities which a revelation must have if it is to be the ultimate solution to the conflicts of our finitude in the state of estrangement. The criterion on the part of the miracle is the power of final revelation for "negating itself without losing itself." Definitive revelation must overcome the danger of substituting itself for the ultimate by sacrificing itself. This is Christ on the cross, perfectly united with God, who in the surrender of all the finite perfection by which he could be a bearer of revelation becomes completely transparent to the mystery he reveals. Thus, he becomes a bearer which merely points and can never be raised to ultimacy. This is the perfect fulfillment of the very essence of the sign-event concept. In turn, Christianity receives an unconditional and universal claim from that to which it witnesses, without Christianity as such being either final or universal. On the part of reason, another criterion of this special revelation is its capacity to overcome the conflicts in reason between autonomy and heteronomy, absolutism and relativism, emotionalism and formalism. The success of Christ in solving these conflicts provides a continuous pragmatic manifestation of Christ as the final revelation.
The need for a definitive and incorruptible manifestation of the ground of being is responded to by final revelation which, as such, it is not only the criterion, but the fulfillment of other revelations. This becomes the "center, aim and origin of the revelatory events" which preceded and surrounded it. The preparatory revelations mediated through nature, men and events are called universal revelation, though they occur only in special, concrete circumstances. They have the function of preparing both the question and the symbols without which the answer provided by final revelation could neither be received nor understood. But, with the advent of final revelation, preparatory revelation ceases, and the period of receiving revelation begins. The people (ecclesia or Church) become the bearer of the original fact of Christ; they continue the process of reception, interpretation and actualization. This combines the certainty of its basis in the ultimate with the risk of faith, for its belief that it cannot be surpassed by a new original revelation is the other side of its belief that revelation has the power of reformation within itself.
Taking this risk with courage, final revelation is the definitive point where the estrangement of essential and existential being is overcome, where finitude is reunited with infinity, man with God, anxiety with courage and mortality with eternity. This is the eschatological reunion of essence and existence, foreshadowed and momentarily grasped in universal preparatory relations. It is definitively established by this final revelation in which Christ becomes the "new being" and God becomes incarnate.pp. 144-45. This is "realized eschatology," but it has happened only in principle, that is, in power and as a beginning. "Those who participate in him participate in the `new being,' though under the condition of man's existential predicament and, therefore, only fragmentarily and by anticipation."
In this context, morality cannot remain the empty or arbitrary self-affirmation of a spiritual being. Its ultimate impulse and final aim is the expression of the transcendent ground of being, but its particular contents, being received from the culture, remain preliminary and relative. In this way, man's actions, like his being, should be provisional manifestations of the divine depth dimension.
In its expression of the fragmentary nature of reality, this view includes the objectivity of positivism without its refusal to penetrate into the nature of existence. In expanding one's horizons beyond the physical, it integrates also the subjectivity of idealism without remaining trapped in a realm of essences. Both insights are synthesized and transcended in a new ontological mysticism. This is not the classical mysticism which disregarded the cosmos for a direct union with a transcendent absolute. Instead, it points by faith to the unfathomable character of the ground of being and to the depth of life as prior to, and condition of, both subject and object. By restoring the element of participation in the divine, this goes to the heart of religion.
Tillich sees two reasons for considering this mysticism to be post-reformation. One is its refusal to elevate anything finite to the position of the divine. The other is its search for the essence of objectivity in the depth of subjectivity, approaching God through the soul. Since this approach is made in the context of total meaninglessness which has characterized the dark side of this century, it is not only contemporary but opens to new hope for the 21st century.
In this study, we have examined the historical context of the thought of Paul Tillich, the philosophical problem this generated, the resulting elaboration of the dialectic, and its theological implications. The great popularity of his work during the period of reconstruction following World War II suggests that his experience and philosophical development might be helpful for many today in analogous circumstances of nation building and rebuilding.
One instance might be illustrative. Martin Luther K ing wrote his doctoral dissertation on the dialectic of Tillich. When doing so, he saw love as the foundational transforming power at work in the heart, but considered it only a personal pilgrimage of the individual soul. Later, he wrote that he did not consider this to be a matter of social import until on visiting India he came to see with the eyes of Gandhi that the Christian doctrine of love was indeed "one of the most potent weapons available to oppressed people in their struggle for freedom." Nevertheless, until he faced the struggle for racial dignity in Montgomery this insight remained only at the intellectual level of understanding and appreciation; it was in the actual borderline circumstances of the struggle for freedom, when he was forced to the limits of meaning by the threat of nonbeing, that his intellectual insight was transformed into a commitment to a way of life.
This is suggestive for philosophers in our times. Aristotle spoke of philosophy as being undertaken at a time of leisure, after one has taken care of the necessities of life. The example of Tillich and King suggests that Marx was correct in saying that in our times philosophy can, and, indeed, often must, be done on another more realistic and historical basis. It was in facing the destructive power of the modern totalitarian state that Tillich found the need to transcend technical reason and to go beneath structures to the very ground of being. Through experiencing directly the negativity of an exploitive system in the form of bombings, fire hoses and vicious dogs, Martin Luther King was able to uncover and give voice to the power to overcome it, and thereby lead his people to new dignity and freedom.
An old Indian proverb has it that when the pupil is ready the teacher will arrive. The example of Tillich and M.L. King suggest that the condition for receiving the power to be may be the very quandaries and dilemmas of change when old structures by their inadequacies contradict life. If so, Tillich's dialectic points out how the more disastrous those structures are manifested to be--that is, through their very negativity--a new level of being can be received, life can be transformed and the human spirit can experience resurrection and new life.