07/19/2023 – Paul Tillich Systematic Theology: Volume I

Paul Tillich saw himself as doing theology on the boundary between religious traditions and major movements in secular culture. This was at a time when no one in the middle was doing effective theology. Theologians were either fundamental or so involved with culture they became no different from culture. The three volumes of Tillich’s Systematic Theology are in this in-between space, filling in the gap as a mediator between Christianity and contemporary culture. I really like Tillich. Can you tell? This is the first of a dope three-episode series. Am I too old to say the word “dope?” Probably. Anyway, check this out. This is TenOnReligion.

Hey peeps, it’s Dr. B. with TenOnReligion. If you like religion and philosophy content one thing I really need you to do is to smash that sub button because it really helps out the channel. The transcripts are available at TenOnReligion.com and new episodes are posted every two weeks, at noon, U.S. Pacific time, so drop me some views.

Hey peeps, it’s Dr. B. with TenOnReligion. If you like religion and philosophy content one thing I really need you to do is to smash that sub button because it really helps out the channel. The transcript is available at TenOnReligion.com and new episodes are posted every two weeks, at noon, U.S. Pacific time, so drop me some views.

This is the first of a three-part series on Paul Tillich’s three-volume Systematic Theology. These are fairly deep works invoking philosophy and theology to create a new line of thought now referred to as philosophical theology. We’re going to try and hit the highlights and help you understand what the main points are in a simple and concise way to help you better understand what Tillich is doing here in these three works. On the philosophical side it continues the line from German philosophers Husserl and Heidegger. On the religious side it continues the line from the German religious scholar Ernst Troeltsch. This episode will cover Volume I on Revelation and God. The next episode will cover Volume II on Existence and the Christ. And the last episode will cover Volume III on the two topics of Life and the Spirit and History and the Kingdom of God. Let’s get started with Volume I.

Volume I was first published in 1951. After a lengthy introduction, it has two parts: Reason and Revelation, and Being and God. In the introduction, Tillich lays the groundwork to develop his theology. He states that theology moves back and forth with the eternal truth and the temporal situation in which the eternal truth must be received. The key concept here is that the eternal truth must not be confused with its temporal expression. If it is, this creates a situation of idolatry because something finite and transitory is elevated to the level of that which is infinite and eternal. There are two formal criteria of theology. One, the object of theology is what concerns us ultimately. Two, since our ultimate concern determines our being or not-being, theological statements are those which deal with their object in such a way that it becomes a matter of being or not-being for us. It is about the possibility and continuance of existence thus it is termed as existential. Tillich’s theology is defined as correlationist because there is a correlation between religious symbols and that which is symbolized by them. Questions of existence arise out of the human situation and are correlated, or explained, through theological answers found in religious symbols.

Now on to Part I: Reason and Revelation, where Tillich first describes reason and the quest for revelation and is heavily dependent on a philosophical method called phenomenology (from Husserl), which is a method that seeks to describe the structure of human experience. Reason has a quest for revelation through our existential predicament. Revelation is the manifestation of the ground of being for human knowledge. More on this phrase “ground of being” in a minute. The goal is to create a truthful relationship between subject and object, or between the knower and the known, which doesn’t disappoint us. It all needs to make sense. This sets up a dilemma between science as an authority controlling knowledge and supernaturalism as a source receiving knowledge.

The second part of Part I: Reason and Revelation describes the reality of revelation. The content of Christianity must match the criteria from Christianity for revelation so that there is a unity between the form and the content. For example, one should not focus on Jesus of Nazareth as an historical event, but as a Christ-event. There’s a big difference because the historical occurrence is not what is universal. The Christ principle is what is eternal and universal. When the formal principle becomes concretized, this represents an intersection of the finite and the infinite. This is why all concepts used to describe a divine act of self-revelation possess a symbolic character. How is one to get around the idea of a God being constrained to revelation only within finite time periods and within the course of finite human history? Tillich suggests the term “ground” because it oscillates between a cause and a substance, transcending both of them. God is the ground of all being. This next statement is deep. The religious word for what is called the ground of being, the possibility of all existence, is God.

Part II: Being and God also has two parts. In the first part, Being and the Question of God, Tillich writes that being an individual self means being separated in some way while still being aware of one’s relation to an environment. One is always actively interrelated with many aspects of this environment, such as nature, society, politics, economics, and so forth. One is never completely bound to the environment in which one finds oneself but is always trying to further understand it and change it through language. Freedom is experienced through the ability to make decisions and exercise responsibility. Like the word “incision,” a decision involves cutting because a decision cuts off other possibilities. Our destiny flows directly out of our decisions. This requires courage in order to survive and accept the results of such decisions. When one has trouble with making decisions one is lost in anxiety, in some sort of in-between space of “not-having-a-place.” With courage, the feeling of “not-having-a-place” is resisted and the ontological insecurity is transformed into security with such acceptance. But how did this situation arise? Where did it all start?

Finite things, including humans, are not self-caused. We don’t create ourselves. Rather, we are “thrown into existence.” This phrase comes from Heidegger and it describes how a tension is manifested. If there is too much individuation, the connections with the world and with others become lost. If there is too much participation creating a complete collective, the freedom of individuality becomes lost. Thus, we must exist within a dynamic tension between the two. If God is the ground of this understanding of existence, there is reality and truth in the idea of God. But here’s the catch. God does not exist per se since God is being-itself beyond both essence and existence. If God were to be understood as a being, then God would be brought under the same ontological anxiety as humans would in all their finite contingency. God would then be just one being among others, and being finite means being not infinite.

The second part of Part II: Being and God describes The Reality of God. This section is really rich. There’s a lot of great stuff going on here. Tillich states that an ultimate concern is what concerns us ultimately, and the more concrete or “real” something or someone is, the more the possible concern about it, with the word “love” often designating the things and people we are most concerned about. An ultimate concern, to be truly ultimate, must transcend all finite and concrete concerns. A problem arises, though, because the more a religious concern transcends the finite, the more abstract it becomes. An ultimate concern, therefore must remain related to us or else it risks becoming completely detached from us, and loses it meaningfulness altogether. This is expressed in religious terms because people can only speak of religious beings on their basis of relation to them. A god who has no relation to humans is no god at all. But what does this idea of God look like?

The existence of the idea of God can develop in history which means that any given culture or society can shape and condition the idea of God differently, but this only determines its variable and changing manifestations, not its invariable or unchanging nature. God as being-itself is a non-symbolic statement since it does not point beyond itself. After this, anything further said about God becomes symbolic. Let’s give an example to illustrate. There is a difference between a sign and a symbol. A sign does not have a relationship to that which it points. A red traffic light points to the idea of stopping but the color red itself has no necessary connection to the idea of stopping and could be replaced with other colors or even other things besides lights. A symbol, on the other hand, does participate in the reality to which it points. It does have a necessary correlation between that which is symbolized and the people who understand it as a symbol. Any assertion about God which is historical and concrete must be a symbol because it uses a segment of finite experience to express something about God. The symbol is affirmed on the finite side but negated on the infinite side because it points beyond itself. Religious symbols are thus double-edged in a way. The are directed toward the infinite which they symbolize and toward the finite through which they symbolize it. It’s like when one uses the idea of a “father” or “mother” or perhaps a “king” to symbolize God, something is being said about what kind of God it is, and also the character of fatherhood or motherhood or kinghood as worthy of being a symbol for the divine.

Now here’s where some people get tripped up though. When one refers to God as a “personal God” this actually does not mean God is a person. It means that God as the ground of all being is also the ground of everything personal and that God carries within the ontological power of personality. God makes personality possible within us. Back in the formative years of early Christianity, theology employed the term persona for the trinitarian hypostases but not for God. God was one ousia, or one being. God became “a person” only in the nineteenth century, in connection with the Kantian separation of nature ruled by physical law from personality ruled by moral law. Recent development of the concept of theism has made God some sort of heavenly, completely perfect person who resides above the world and all humans. The protest of atheism against such a highest person is correct. There is no evidence for the existence of such a God, nor is such a God a matter of ultimate concern. This makes the idea of a “personal God” into a confusing symbol, if it is a symbol at all.

The word “spirit” on the other hand, has almost disappeared from the English language as a significant philosophical term, in contrast to German, French, and Italian, in which the words Geist, spirit, and spirito have preserved their philosophical standing. But the meaning of Spirit is often misunderstood, for Spirit (with an upper-case “S”) is the symbolic application of spirit (with a lower-case “s”) to the divine life. We’re going to talk more about spirit when we get to Volume III.

Lastly, the Christian doctrine of creation is not the story of an event which took place “once upon a time.” Rather, it represents the meaning of finitude implied in being a creature. It is the background of human creativity, which comes from God as the ground of all being. In the creation account, the creative ground of the divine life is expressed symbolically. Tillich talks more about that in Volume II so that was a little bit of a teaser for the next episode. There’s obviously a lot more going on in this lengthy and deep work connecting philosophy and theology, but these were a few of the more important ideas from Volume I to help you get better acquainted with Tillich’s thought.

So, what do you think about Tillich’s understanding of revelation and God? Leave a comment below and let me know what you think. In the next episode we’ll get into Tillich’s Systematic Theology II, Existence and the Christ. 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.

Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology: Volume I. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1951.