02/23/2022 – Paul Tillich's Dynamics of Faith

Today we’re going to talk about ultimacy, symbols, myths, faith, revelation, there’s a lot of stuff going on in this episode. This is a really big show…really big. Come check this out. If you can handle it. This is TenOnReligion.

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Okay, I already did a general episode on Paul Tillich over six months ago, but that actually focused more on his popular book, The Courage To Be. I wanted cycle back around to Tillich again because his other popular book, Dynamics of Faith, has a lot of great info in it and I thought delving into it and mining some of the gems there would be a thought-provoking thing to do. Quick story. One of my graduate school professors from twenty years ago recently passed away and the school was giving away his book collection. I stopped by and actually grabbed his copy of Dynamics of Faith, which I didn’t even know he had. It’s cool because I get to see all of his side notes and underlined passages. He was really smart, but, sadly, I actually didn’t get along with him very well. Okay, let’s get into it.

Tillich’s Dynamics of Faith, written way back in 1957, is a relatively short book with seven chapters. The main purpose of this book is to explain how faith experiences ultimacy through what Tillich calls “ultimate concern.” This is experienced through concrete content, specifically symbols and myths, but also can be theoretically isolated through analysis. One doesn’t necessarily need to understand how faith as ultimate concern is experienced through symbols and myths in order to live a life of faith as long as such symbols and myths aren’t taken too literally. This is an immensely important point and we’re going to explain this a little bit more.

So, what is ultimate concern? It’s an unconditional demand which promises ultimate fulfillment and the exclusion from such fulfillment is threatened if the unconditional demand is not obeyed. For example, if ultimate concern is financial success and/or social standing, then one must unconditionally surrender to its laws along with paying a price. The price is likely sacrifice of genuine human relationships and personal morality because all other people are treated solely as a means to an end. That’s seriously messed up. When fulfilled, the promise of this faith proves to be empty. But ultimate concern can also be directly related to what has traditionally been labeled as religion. Religious consciousness is that which is really ultimate vs. what claims to be ultimate but is really only finite. The “concern” refers to the relation between the one who is concerned (the subjective side), and the concern itself (the objective side). The phrase “ultimate concern” unites the two sides. The faith through which one believes is the ultimate concern. The faith which is believed is that toward which this act is directed, the ultimate itself, expressed in symbols of the divine. One side cannot be without the other side. This is where one can see a difference between true faith and an idolatrous faith. An idolatrous faith is something which claims infinity without actually having it, such as the drive for financial success as an end in itself. It only results in existential disappointment. This is why you hear so many stories of CEOs and presidents of large corporations feeling empty inside despite attaining massive financial wealth. The risk to faith in one’s ultimate concern is huge. If it proves to be a failure, then the meaning of one’s life breaks down because one has surrendered to something which is not worth it. Yeah.

So, what about religious communities? The religious language, the language of symbol and myth, is created in the community of the believers and cannot be fully understood outside this community. But within it, the religious language enables the act of faith to have a concrete content of ultimate concern. Punishments in religions are attempts to save people from self-destruction. It many cases it is a matter of eternal life and death, thus both the individual and the community must be protected. At the same time, if you’re forced to believe, do you really believe? Doubt must always be a necessary part of the deal or else faith isn’t really faith. If the concrete elements are placed above the doubt the situation becomes problematical. This is because something which is finite and conditional, such as a human interpretation of a person, a book, or an event, is seen as ultimate replacing the true ultimate. Rather, the human interpretations of all of these religious people, books, and events must point to the ultimate which is beyond all of them.

Faith is more than trust in authorities because almost all the struggles between faith and knowledge are rooted in the wrong understanding of faith as a type of knowledge which has a low degree of evidence but is supported by some religious authority. Faith is not a kind of theoretical problem of higher or lower evidence, of probability or improbability, but it is an existential problem of “to be or not to be.” To be or not to be. That is the question. The ultimate concern must be expressed symbolically because symbolic language is the only thing that can express the ultimate. The true ultimate is infinite so no finite reality can express it directly. To put this in equation form, symbols = ultimacy + concreteness.

Myths are symbols of faith combined in stories about divine-human encounters. They use material from our ordinary experiences and create, often in narrative form, stories in the framework of time and space while simultaneously belonging to the nature of the ultimate which is beyond time and space. One can replace a myth with another myth but one cannot remove a myth. Even if we don’t recognize it, we always are living by a myth as a combination of symbols of our ultimate concern. We often feel safe in an unbroken mythological world. If faith starts to take its symbols literally (like God created the world in seven days), then it becomes idolatrous because it calls something ultimate which is less than ultimate. One needs to inquire of oneself whether the medium through which ultimate concern is experienced expresses real ultimacy. The human mind, however, often forgets this inadequacy of the finite to express what is of ultimate concern and identifies the sacred object itself with the ultimate itself. Then, other concrete bearers of ultimate reality are perceived as idolatrous vis-à-vis “my” concrete bearer of ultimate reality. The conflict between religions is not really a conflict between forms of belief, but it is a conflict between expressions of our ultimate concern.

Some religious groups try to claim revelation, but according to Tillich, they misuse this term. The popular usage of revelation is divine information seemingly dropping out of the sky to prophets, apostles and other holy figures who then create historical documents which then become sacred and the acceptance of such is called faith. This can easily fall into a rigid legalism or literalism. For example, the famous struggle between the theory of evolution and the theology of some Christian groups was not a struggle between science and faith, but between a science whose faith deprived humans of humanity and a faith whose expression was distorted by Biblical literalism. Revelation is rather the experience in which an ultimate concern grasps the human mind and creates a community in which this concern expresses itself in symbols of action, imagination and thought. The truth of faith cannot be made dependent on the historical truth of the stories and legends in which faith has expressed itself. This independence of historical truth is one of the most important consequences of the understanding of faith as the state of ultimate concern. Faith can say that something of ultimate concern has happened in history because the question of the ultimate in being and meaning is involved.

There is a subjective and an objective side to this and the truth of faith must be considered from both sides. From the subjective side one must say that faith is true if it adequately expresses an ultimate concern. From the objective side one must say that faith is true if its content is the really ultimate, as in, it is not idolatrous. Every type of faith has the tendency to elevate its concrete symbols to absolute validity. The criterion of the truth of faith, therefore, is that it implies an element of self-negation. It should express both ultimacy and its own lack of ultimacy. It’s never the final word. The criterion contains a “Yes” meaning it does not reject any truth of faith in whatever form it may appear, and it contains a “No” meaning it does not accept any truth of faith as ultimate except the idea that no one person or religion solely possesses it. Again, this is because we are never able to bridge the infinite distance between the finite and the infinite from the side of the finite, which is the side that we’re all on. Unless, of course, you’re infinite. And it that’s the case, prove it by stepping right into this room that I’m recording this video. Holy mackerel, what the…how did you get here…ow…what are you doing here? Hey get out of here.

Just kidding. No one’s really here. Uh, wait a minute. I hear footsteps. Do you hear footsteps?

Faith is real only in the community of faith, or more precisely, in the communion of a language of faith. Separation from the activities of the community of faith is not necessarily separation from the community itself because the language and symbols are still alive. But neither the cultural nor the mythological expressions of faith are meaningful if their symbolic character is not understood. Faith cannot remain alive without expressions of faith and the personal participation in them. Religious myths, if interpreted as the symbolic expression of ultimate concern, are the fundamental creations of every religious community.

But what about religions vs. religion? Tillich asks, must the encounter of faith with faith lead either to a tolerance without criteria, or to an intolerance without self-criticism? If faith is understood as the state of being ultimately concerned, this problem is overcome. The criterion of every faith is the ultimacy of the ultimate which it tries to explain. The self-criticism of every faith is the insight into the relative validity of the concrete symbols in which it appears. Conversion is important only if, in the new belief, the ultimacy of the ultimate concern is better preserved than that in the old belief. Conversion is not a matter of prevailing arguments, but it is a matter of personal surrender. There’s not likely a way of reaching a unity of faith in all of humanity except by distinguishing ultimacy itself from that in which ultimacy expresses itself. That can only be justified if a religion remains aware of the conditional and non-ultimate character of its own symbols. And that’s certainly not currently the case for most religions.

So, what do you think about how Tillich defines religion as ultimate concern? Does this all make sense to you? Do you have any questions or critiques about this way of interpreting religion? Leave a comment below and let me know what you think. Until next time, stay curious. If you enjoyed this, support the channel in the link below, please like and share this video and subscribe to this channel. This is TenOnReligion.