Honest to God - redux

It is exceedingly hard to abandon the mental structure upon which one has built their life and worldview. Change is a process and takes time as one wrestles with the issues. Even if one wants to move along, there are vestiges of the prior that will always linger. It is a journey of self discovery as much as it is a journey of knowledge discovery.

The cross is where history and life, legend and reality, time and eternity, intersect. The various moral and theological and sociological disputes of the day, however progressively resolved with ecclesiastical connivance, have nothing to say to a very real spiritual hunger that exists deep within the soul of man. There is no comfort in the thought that God is dead, or that mankind has come of age...the only means of satisfying that hunger remains the bread of life that Jesus offered.

The New Morality (contd)

Tillich seeks to push beyond 'supranaturalism and naturalism' to a third position, in which they transcendent is nothing external or 'out there' but is encountered in, with and under the Thou of all finite relationships as their ultimate depth and ground and meaning. In ethics this means accepting as the basis of moral judgments the actual concrete relationship in all its particularity, refusing to subordinate it to any universal norm or to treat it merely as a case, but yet, in the depth of that unique relationship, meeting and responding to the claims of the sacred, the holy and the absolutely unconditional.

Life in Christ Jesus, in the new being, in the Spirit, means having no absolutes but his love, being totally uncommitted in every other respect but totally committed in this. The claim of the Christ may come to others, as indeed it often comes to the Christian, incognito: but since it is the claim of home, of the personal ground of our very being, it does not come as anything foreign. Love alone, because, as it were, it has a built-in moral compass, enabling it to 'home' intuitively upon the deepest need of the other, can allow itself to be directed completely by the situation. It is able to embrace an ethic of radical responsiveness, meeting every situation on its own merits, with no prescriptive laws. For this reason it is the only ethic which offers a point of constancy in a world of flux and yet remains absolutely free for, and free over, the changing situation. It is prepared to see every moment as a fresh creation from God's hand demanding its own and perhaps wholly unprecedented response.

Brunner argues that Christian ethics is not a scheme of codified conduct. It is a purposive effort to relate love to a world of relativities through a casuistry obedient to love. It is a radical 'ethic of the situation' with prescribed-except love. It is love which is the constitutive principle-and law, at most, is only the regulative one, if it is even that.

It is of course a highly dangerous ethic and the representatives of supranaturalistic legalism will, like the Pharisees, always fear it. Seeing it a licence to laxity and to the broadest possible living. But love's gate is strict and narrow and its requirements infinitely deeper and more penetrating. This 'new morality' is, of course, none other than the old morality, just as the new commandment is the old, yet ever fresh, commandment of love. But love is the end of the law precisely because it does respect persons-the unique, individual person-unconditionally. 'The absoluteness of love is its power to go into the concrete situation, to discover what is demanded by the predicament of the concrete to which it turns'. Whatever the pointers of the law to the demands of love, there can for the Christian be no 'packaged' moral judgments-for persons are more important even than 'standards'.

Worldly Holiness

'What is the place of worship and prayer in an entire absence of religion?' Bonhoeffer

Communion is the assertion of 'the beyond' in the midst of life, the holy in the common. When worship becomes a realm into which to withdraw from the world 'to be with God' it is the essence of a religious perversion. Doing so relegates the realm of the non-religious (ie. most of life) to the profane. It implies that the holy place where the Christ is met, lies not, as in the parable of the Sheep and the Goats, in the ordinary relationships of life; but within the circle of 'the religious'. The purpose of worship is not to retire from the secular into the department of the religious, ie. not an escape from the world, but to open oneself to the meeting of the Christ in the common. The function of worship is to make more sensitive to these depths: to focus, sharpen and deepen our response to the world and to other people beyond the point of proximate concern. The test of worship is how far it makes us more sensitive to the 'beyond in our midst', to the Christ of the hungry, the naked, the homeless and the prisoner. Only if we are more likely to recognize him there after attending an act of worship is that worship Christian rather than a piece of religiosity in Christian dress.

Prayer is conceived in terms of turning aside from the business of 'the world' to 'be with God'. It is assumed that prayer is defined in terms of what one does in the times of disengagement. The sacramental moments of communion with God are to be expected in the periods of withdrawal. We have developed a deep inferiority complex because the experts have told us that this the way we ought to pray, and yet we find that we cannot maintain ourselves for any length of time with the required discipline or consistency - we end up saying we are not the praying type and carry within ourselves an unacknowledged sense of failure and guilt. Many of our habits and traditions come from our medieval inheritance which is not as relevant for a man come of age.

I wonder whether Christian prayer, prayer in the light of the Incarnation, is not to be defined in terms of penetration through the world to God rather than of withdrawal from the world of God. How easily one finds oneself giving pious advice to a person faced with a decision to 'go away and pray about it'. Traditional spirituality has placed a premium upon 'the interior life', regarding this as the spiritual core of man. 'The heart' in the biblical sense is not the inward life, but the whole man in relation to God. Man lives just as much from outwards to inwards as from inwards to outwards. The need for times of withdrawal is accepted naturally, but with no pretension that these times are particularly 'holy'.

I pray for people and agonize for them most when I meet them and give myself to them. It is in this incarnational relationship that deep speaks to deep and the Spirit of God is able to take up our inarticulate groans and turn them into prayer. To open oneself up to another unconditionally in love is to be with him in the presence of God, and that is the heart of intercession. To pray for another is to expose both oneself and him to the common ground of our being; it is to see one's concern for him in terms of ultimate concern, to let God into the relationship. Intercession is to be with another at that depth, whether in silence or compassion or action. It may not be specifically religious, it may not be consciously Christian; but it may be a meeting of Christ in that man, because his humanity is accepted 'without any reservation'. The Christian life, the life of 'the man for others', must, as Bonhoeffer insisted, be a 'worldly life'. Yet it must be a life of 'holy worldliness', of 'sacred secularity'.

The Man for Others (contd)

It is only on the Cross that Jesus can be the bearer of the final revelation and the embodiment of God's decisive act: it is 'Christ crucified' who is 'the power of God and the wisdom of God'. For it is in this ultimate surrender of self, in love 'to uttermost', that Jesus is so completely united in the Ground of his being that he can say, 'I and the Father are one...The Father is in me and I am in the Father'.

Faith is participation in this Being of Jesus (incarnation, cross and resurrection). Our relation to God not a religious relationship to a supreme Being, absolute in power and goodness, which is a spurious conception of transcendence, but a new life for others, through participation in the Being of God.

Jesus is 'the man for others', the one in whom Love has completely taken over, the one who is utterly open to, and united with, the Ground of his being. And this 'life for others, through participation in the Being of God', is transcendence.

In the man Christ Jesus stands revealed, exposed at the surface level of 'flesh', the depth and ground of all our being as Love.

The whole schema of a supranatural Being coming down from heaven to 'save' mankind from sin, in the way that a man might put his finger into a glass of water to rescue a struggling insect, is frankly incredible to man 'come of age', who no longer believes in such a deus ex machina.

The state of our whole life is estrangement from others and ourselves, because we are estranged from the Ground of our being, because we are estranged from the origin and aim of our life...We cannot escape, however. If that something is the Ground of our being, we are bound to it for all eternity, just as we are bound to ourselves and to all other life. We always remain in the power of that from which we are estranged.

It is this union-in-estrangement with the Ground of our being - what Paul Althaus once described as 'inescapable godlessness in inescapable relationship to God' - that we mean by hell. But equally it is the union-in-love with the Ground of our being, such as we see in Jesus Christ, that is the meaning of heaven. And it is the offer of that life, in all its divine depth, to overcome the estrangement and alienation of existence as we know it that the New Testament speaks of as the 'new creation'.

More Fragments

"Remember not the former things, neither consider the things of old," says the prophet. The new must break the power of the old, not only in reality, but also in our memory; and one is not possible without the other. We cannot be born anew if the power of the old is not broken within us; and it is not broken so long as it puts the burden of guilt upon us. Therefore, religion, prophetic and apostolic, pronounces above all, forgiveness. Forgiveness means that the old is thrown into the past because the new has come.

Nothing is more surprising than the rise of the new within ourselves. We do not foresee or observe its growth. The new is being born in us, just when we least believe in it. It appears in remote corners of our souls which we have neglected for a long time.

The new which we sought and longed for comes to us in the moment in which we lose hope of ever finding it. That is the first thing we must say about the new: it appears when and where it chooses. We cannot force it, and we cannot calculate it.

"Behold, I am doing a new thing." "I" points to the source of the really new, to that which is always old and always new, the Eternal. The really new is that which has in itself eternal power and eternal light.

New things arise in every moment, at every place. Nothing is today as it was yesterday. But this kind of new is old almost as soon as it appears. It falls under the judgment of the Preacher: "There is no new thing under the sun." Yet sometimes a new thing appears which does not age so easily, which makes life possible again, in both our personal and our historical existence, a saving new, which has the power to appear when we least expect it, and which has the power to throw into the past what is old and burdened with curse and guilt. Its saving power is the power of the Eternal within it.

Behold, I Am Doing a New Thing

Old refers to that which passes away and shall not be remembered any more - the destiny of everything created.

At the beginning of our period (the Enlightenment) we decided for freedom. It was a right decision; it created something new and great in history. But in that decision we excluded the security, social and spiritual, without which man cannot live and grow. And now, in the old age of our period, the quest to sacrifice freedom for security splits every nation and the whole world with really demonic power (ie. Hitler and WWII).

We have decided for means to control nature and society (ie. science). We have created them, and we have brought about something new and great in the history of all mankind. But have excluded ends. We have never been ready to answer the question, "For what?" And now, when we approach old age, the means claim to be the ends; our tools have become our masters, and the most powerful of them have become a threat to our very existence (nuclear weapons).

We have decided for reason against outgrown traditions and honored superstitions. That was a great and courageous decision, and it gave a new dignity to man. But we have, in that decision, excluded the soul, the ground and power of life. We have cut off our mind from our soul; we have suppressed and mistreated the soul within us, in other men, and in nature. And now, when we are old, the forces of the soul break destructively into our minds, driving us to mental disease and insanity, and effecting the disintegration of the souls of uncounted millions.

From the very beginning of our period we have decided for the nation, as the expression of our special way of life and of our unique contribution to history. The decision was great and creative, and for centuries it was effective. But in that decision we excluded mankind and all symbols expressing the unity of all men. Now, in the old age of our period, the most powerful nations themselves claim to represent mankind, and try to impose their ways of life upon all men, producing, therefore, wars of destruction, which will perhaps unite all mankind in the peace of the grave.

Our period has decided for a secular world. That was a great and much needed decision. It threw a church from her throne, a church which had become a power of suppression and superstition. It gave consecration and holiness to our daily life and work. Yet it excluded those deep things for which religion stands: the feeling for the inexhaustible mystery of life, the grip of an ultimate meaning of existence, and the invincible power of an unconditional devotion. These things cannot be excluded. Now, in the old age of our secular world, we have seen the most horrible manifestation of these demonic images; e have looked more deeply into the mystery of evil than most generations before us; we have seen the unconditional devotion of millions to a satanic image; we feel our period's sickness unto death.

Paul Tillich, The Shaking of the Foundations, "Behold, I Am Doing a New Thing" (1949)

A Theologian

The foundation of our theological existence is that the Divine Spirit keeps us in its power, and makes it impossible for us ever to escape the theological question, the question of our ultimate concern, the question of God. We consider a theologian as a believer in spite of his doubt and despair, and as a member of the Church, in whose power all theological work is done, in spite of his lack of certainty.

Fragments - Shadowlands - Looking Through A Glass Darkly

"Love never faileth; but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known."

I Corinthians 13:8-12

The fragmentary things shall vanish away; the complete things shall abide. The former are temporal, the latter are eternal. Even all the spiritual goods will disappear with all the material and intellectual goods. They are all fragmentary, temporal, transitory. Love alone does not disappear; it endures forever. For God himself is love.

Paul singles out knowledge, and points to the difference between our fragmentary, indirect, and darkened knowledge, and the full, direct, and total knowledge to come. He speaks of something which, besides love, is perfect and eternal - namely, the seeing of the truth, face to face; the knowledge is as full as Gods knowledge of us.

Knowledge is like the perception of things in a mirror, that it therefore concerns enigmas and riddles. This is only another way of expressing the fragmentary character of knowledge. For fragments out of the context of the whole are only riddles to us. We may surmise the nature of the whole; we may approach the whole indirectly; but we do not see the whole itself; we do not grasp it directly face to face. A little light and much darkness; a few fragments and never the whole; many problems and never a solution; only reflections in the mirror of our souls, without the source of truth itself: that is the situation of our knowledge.

The misery of man lies in the fragmentary character of his life and knowledge; the greatness of man lies in his ability to know that his being is fragmentary and enigmatic. For man is able to be puzzled and to ask, to go beyond the fragments, seeking the perfect. Yet, in being able to do so, he feels at the same time the tragedy implicit in his being, the tragedy of the riddle and the fragment.

We dwell with the fragments. We realize that the fragments will always remain fragments, even if one attempts to organize them. The unity which they belong lies beyond them; it is grasped through hope, but not face to face.

The Meaning of Providence

"For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."

Romans 8:38-39

What is Providence?

It is certainly not a vague promise that, with the help of God, everything will come to a good end; there are many things that come to a bad end. And it is not the maintenance of hope in every situation; there are situations in which there can be no hope. Nor is it the anticipation of a period of history, in which divine Providence will be proved by human happiness and goodness; there is no generation in which divine Providence will be less paradoxical than it is in ours. But the content of the faith in Providence is this: when death rains from heaven as it does now (just post-WW II), when hunger and persecution drive millions from place to place as they do now, and when prisons and slums all over the world distort the humanity of the bodies and souls of men as they do now - we can boast in that time, and just in that time, that even all of this cannot separate us from the love of God. In this sense, and in this sense alone, all things work together for the good, for the ultimate good, the eternal love, and the Kingdom of God. Faith in divine Providence is the faith that nothing can prevent us from fulfilling the ultimate meaning of our existence. Providence does not mean a divine planning by which everything is predetermined, as in an efficient machine. Rather, Providence means that there is a creative and saving possibility implied in every situation, which cannot be destroyed by any event.

"Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or anguish, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword...? In all these things, we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us..." This is the faith in Providence, and this alone.

Prophets

All people desire false prophets, who, through the glorification of their gods, glorify their followers, and themselves. People long to be flattered in regard to their desires and virtues, their religious feeling and social activity, their will to power and utopian hopes, their knowledge and love, their family and race, their class and nation.

True prophets are the instruments of God in the actualization of His judgment against mankind. They are instruments in so far as the prophetic word always excites the opposition of man with respect both to his vital existence and his moral and religious existence - indeed, particularly with respect to his religious existence.

More on Depth

It is comfortable to live on the surface so long as it remains unshaken. The depth of suffering is the door to the depth of truth. The pain of looking into one's own depth is too intense for most people. They would rather return to the shaken and devastated surface of their former lives and thoughts.

The prophets of all time can tell us of the hating resistance which they provoke by their daring to uncover the depths of social judgment and social hope.

Our attempt to avoid the road which leads to such a depth of suffering and our use of pretexts to avoid it are natural. One of the methods, and a very superficial one, is the assertion that deep things are sophisticated things, unintelligible to an uneducated mind. But the market of real depth is simplicity. For you ought to know that nothing of real importance is too profound for anyone. It is not because it is too profound, but rather because it is too uncomfortable, that you shy away from the truth.

Every step into the depth of thought is a breaking away from the surface of former thoughts.



Note: Keep in mind that Tillich was addressing a deeply traumatized post-war crowd, and had himself, the disillusionment of the German people in his mind.

The Depth of Existence

Most of our life continues on the surface. We are enslaved by the routine of our daily lives, in work and leisure, in business and recreation. We are overwhelmed by innumerable dealings, both good and bad. We are more driven than driving. We do not stop to look at the height above us, or to the depth below us. We are always moving forward, although usually in a circle, which finally brings us back to the place from which we first moved. We are in constant motion and never stop to plunge into the depth. We talk and talk and never listen to the voices speaking to our depth and from our depth. We accept ourselves as we appear to ourselves, and do not care what we really are. Like hit-and-run drivers, we injure our souls by the speed with which we move on the surface; and then we rush away, leaving our bleeding souls alone. We miss, therefore, our depth and our true life. And it is only when the picture that we have of ourselves breaks down completely, only when we find ourselves acting against all the expectations we had derived from that picture, and only when an earthquake shakes and disrupts the surface of our self-knowledge, that we are willing to look into a deeper level of our being.

Paul Tillich, Sermon on "The Depth of Existence," in The Shaking of the Foundations