A History of Christian Thought: From its Judaic and Hellenistic Origins to Existentialism
by
Paul Tillich,
Carl E. Braaten (Editor)
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Previously published in two separate volumes entitled
Paperback, 550 pages
Published November 15th 1972 by Touchstone
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URL http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Tillich
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Preface
to the Touchstone Edition
This history of
Christian thought combines into one volume two hooks of Paul Tillich's lectures
that have been previously published. The first part appeared under the title A
History of Christian Thought, beginning with the Graeco-Roman
preparations for Christianity and ending with the post-Reformation development
in Protestant theology. The second part first appeared as Perspectives on
Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Protestant Theology, beginning with the
rise of the Enlightenment and ending with the theology of Karl Barth and
modern existentialism.* A
History of Christian Thought originated as lectures delivered
by Tillich at Union Theological Seminary in New York, stenographically recorded
and transcribed by Peter N. John and distributed by him in a small first
edition. A second edition appeared shortly thereafter, in which Peter John
corrected a number of errors. At that time he acknowledged the need for a
thorough revision of the text for matters of style and content. This I tried to
accomplish in the first published edition by Harper & Row, 1968. This
edition now appears unaltered in this volume.
The
second part of this volume contains tape-recorded lectures which Paul Tillich
delivered at the Divinity School of the University of Chicago during the
spring quarter of the 1962-63 school year and is based entirely on his spoken
words.
Tillich's history of the
Christian tradition appears at a time when interest in new theological fads
that come and go quickly has faded dramatically. The demise of Tillich's
thought was prematurely nnounced. In the world of English-speaking theology no
move ent has yet arisen to eclipse the influence of Paul Tillich. The wider
dissemination of this influence, to a new generation of college and seminary
students, as well as to theologians who have a lot of catching up to do, is
very much to be desired. Tillich introduces students to the roots of their own
religious traditions, making the symbols of their faith more meaningful for
today. He was and is a truly great teacher of theology.
CARL
E. BRAATEN
Chicago, Illinois March 1972
* A comprehensive
German edition of these volumes, edited by Ingeborg C. Ilennel, was
published in 1971.
Paul Tillich and the Classical Christian Tradition by Carl E. Braaten
THE RADICALISM OF PAUL TILLIcH
it has been said that the real Tillich is the radical
Tillich but the radicalism which moved Paul Tillich was not the
iconoclastic spirit of those who wish to create de novo an original
brand of Christianity; rather, it was the radicalism which moved the great prophetic spirits of
the religious tradition. Tillich's term for it was the 'Protestant
principle." This radical principle was to be used not against but for
the sake of the "catholic substance" of the Christian tradition. One
question which Tillich posed for his own theological effort was this: "How can the radicalism of
prophetic criticism which is implied in the principles of genuine Protestantism
be united with the classical tradition of dogma, sacred law, sacraments,
hierarchy, cult, as preserved in the Catholic churches?"' Tillich
also saw the danger in prophetic criticism. The prophet hopes to get to the
heart of the matter with his knife of radical protest; the false prophet is
known in the tradition as one who cuts out the heart itself. It was the true
radicalism rooted in Biblical prophetis in which drove Tillich to criticize our
religious and cultural forms of tradition. Thus, like the Old Testament
prophets, his criticism of
the tradition was always from the tradition, from some deeper level
in it, not from some arbitrary, neutral or alien standpoint outside the "theological
circle .112
1 Tillich, "The Conquest of Intellectual
Provincialism: Europe and America," Theology of Culture (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1959), P. 169.
Most of Tillich's commentators and critics in America have had the
impression that Tillich was a radical, perhaps even dangerous, innovator.3 The chief reason for this
impression was often cited by Tillich himself. Americans—and perhaps moderns in general—have little
sense of history. They
are not aware of the sources of tradition from which they come.
Europeans possess a more vivid historical consciousness than Americans,
and for this reason European theologians are much less inclined to stress the
innovating features of Tillich's thought. Many of Tillich's favorite ideas and
terms, which sounded utterly novel to American students, came originally from a
long line of honored ancestors. His basic categories and concepts, the style
and structure of his thinking, were not unprecedented in the Christian
tradition—to those who knew their history of thought. Tillich's uniqueness, his
creativity and originality, lay in his power of thought, the comprehensive
scope of his vision, his depth of insight, the systematic consistency with
which he developed the internal relations of the various elements of his philosophy
and theology, and the daring he displayed in crossing borders into new fields.
He could be so actively immersed in the currents of his time and exert such
vital influence on the shape of things to come because his roots were deeply
embedded in and nourished by the classical traditions of the Christian
Church.
DIALOGUE WITH THE CLASSICAL
TnMrnoN
Tillich was a son of the whole tradition of the church in a measure that
can hardly be said of any other theologian since the Reformation.
2 To be in the "theological circle" is to have
made an existential decision, to be in the situation of faith. Cf. Tillich, Systematic
Theology (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1951), Vol. II, Pp.
6, 8,9-11.
3 See Tillich's answer to
a student's question, "Is Paul Tillich a dangerous man?" in Ultimate
Concern, edited by D. Mackenzie Brown (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), pp.
188-93.
The Classical Christian Tradition xv
Although Tillich confessed he was
a Lutheran "by birth, education, religious experience, and theological
reflection '114 he did not rest comfortably within any traditional form of
Lutheranism. He transcended so far as possible every limiting feature of his
immediate heritage. The transconfessional style of his theology made it
difficult for many of his Lutheran contemporaries to recognize him as a member
of the same family.5 He did not have to try to be ecumenical; for the substance of
his thinking was drawn from the whole sweep of the classical tradition. His
theology was a living dialogue with great men and ideas of the past, with the
fathers of the ancient church, both Greek and Latin, with the schoolmen and
mystics of the medieval period, with Renaissance humanists and Protestant
reformers, with the theologians of liberalism and their neo-orthodox critics.
His method of handling the tradition was eminently dialectical, in the spirit
of the Sic et Non of Abelard.
Tillich's systematic theology was built up through the rhythm of raising
and answering existential questions. Each of the five parts of the system
contains two sections, one in which the human question is developed, the other
in which the theological answer is given. He admitted that there could very
well have been an intermediate section which places his theological answer more
explicitly within the context of the tradition.° The dialogue with the
tradition mediated through the Scriptures and the church, the sort of thing
which appears in small print in Karl Barth's Church Dogmatics, thus
receded pretty much into the background of the Systematic Theology. This
sacrifice of explicit attention to the historical tradition had the
result, I believe, in gaining for Tillich the reputation in some circles as a
speculative theologian who arbitrarily projected ideas whether or not they
squared with the central thrusts of the church's tradition. If that was the
result, it is unfortunate. It conceals the catholicity of Tillich's mind and
the extent
4 Tillich, The Interpretation of History (New
York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1936),p.54.
5 Cf. my brief article, "Paul Tillich as a Lutheran
Theologian," in The Chicago Lutheran Theological Seminary Record (August,
1962), Vol. 67, No. 3. See also the chapter by Jaroslav Pelikan, "Ein
deutscher lutherischer Theologe in Amerika: Paul Tillich und die dogmatische
Tradition," in Gott ist am Werk, the Festschrift for Hanns
Lilje, edited by Heinz Brunotte and Erich Ruppel (Hamburg: Furche Verlag,
1959), PP. 27-36.
6 Systematic Theology, I,
p. 66.
to which his systematic ideas
were won through an intense intellectual struggle with the sources of the
tradition.
To reveal more of this living background of Tillich's systematic theology,
it has seemed important to us to publish some of his lectures on the history of
thought. Seldom did he publish in the field of historical theology. He had a
fear of being judged by the strict canons of scientific historiography. On the
occasion of the Tillich Memorial Service in Chicago, Mircea Eliade was not
exaggerating when he stated: "But, of course, Paul Tillich would never
have become a historian of religions nor, as a matter of fact, a historian of
anything else. He was interested in the existential meaning of
history—Geschichte, not Historie."1 Yet, very few minds were so
laden with the consciousness of history, with memories of the classical
tradition. Tillich's students were awed by his ability to trace from memory the
history of an idea through its main stages of development, observing even
subtle shifts in the nuances of meaning at the main turning points. In fact, a
great part of Tillich's career in teaching theology was devoted to lectures and
seminars in the history of thought. Students who were privileged to study under
Tillich at Union, Harvard, or Chicago reminisce today about their most
memorable courses, such as the basic sequence in The I listory of Christian
Thought, or The History of Christian Mysticism, or The Pre-Socratics, or German
Classical Idealism. Even students from backgrounds uncongenial to Tillich's
views on the Christian faith could not fail to learn from him as an interpreter
of the Christian tradition. Many were liberated from the strait jacket of a
given denominational tradition to become more open to the fullness of the
common Christian heritage.
THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY
The key to an understanding of Tillich's handling of the tradition is
his fundamental proposition that every interpretation is a creative union of
the interpreter and the interpreted in a third beyond both of them.
7 Eliade, "Paul Tillich and the History of
Religions," in The Future of Religions, by Paul Tillich, edited by
Jerald C. Brauer (New York: Harper & Row, 1966), P. 3.
The Classical Christian Tradition xvii
The ideal of
unbiased historical research to report only the "naked facts" without
any admixture of subjective interpretation Tillich called "a questionable
concept."8 Without a union of the historian with the material he interprets there
can be no real understanding of history. "The historian's task is to 'make
alive' what has 'passed away.' "° The dimension of interpretation is made
unavoidable because history itself is more than a series of facts. An
historical event "is a syndrome (i.e., a running-together) of facts and
interpretation." 0 Furthermore, the historian himself is unavoidably a member of a group
which has a living tradition of memories and values. "Nobody writes
history on a 'place above all places.'" The element of empathic
participation in history is basic to the act of interpreting history.
Tillich was too much influenced by both the existentialist and the
Marxist understandings of history to imagine that one could grasp the meaning
of history by surveying the past in cool detachment. in a crucial passage
Tillich emphatically states: "Only full involvement in historical action
can give the basis for an interpretation of history. Historical activity is the
key to understanding history.1112 This dynamic view of history arose out of Tillich's
own struggle with the historical actualities of his situation. In one of his
autobiographies he acknowledged that many of his most important concepts, such
as the Protestant principle, kairos, the demonic, the Gestalt of
grace, and the trio of theonomy, heteronomy, autonomy, were worked out for the
sake of a new interpretation of history. "History became the central
problem of my theology and philosophy," he said, "because of the
historical reality as I found it when I returned from the first World
War."13 With prophetic zeal he sounded forth the theme of kairos, that
moment in time when the eternal breaks into history, issuing to his
contemporaries a summons to a consciousness of history in the sense of the kairos.
He
8 Systematic Theology, III, P. 301.
9 Systematic Theology, I, P. 104.
10 Systematic Theology, III, p. 302.
11 Ibid., p. 301.
12 Ibid., p. 349.
13 Tillich, The Protestant Era, translated by James
Luther Adams (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1948), xvii.
allied himself in these years
with religious socialism, and was no doubt the main theoretician of this
movement.
When Tillich turned toward the past he had little interest in it for its
own sake. His involvement in the present and his sense of responsibility for
the future drove him to search out meanings from the past. "Whoever would
maintain the idea of pure observation must content himself with numbers and
names, statistics and newspaper clippings. He might collect thousands of things
which could be verified but he Would not for that reason be able to understand
what is actually happening in the present. One is enabled to speak of that
which is most vital in the present, of that which makes the present a
generative force, only insofar as one immerses oneself in the creative process
which brings the future forth out of the pat."14 To act in the
present, one must understand oneself and one's situation; to understand this,
one has to recapitulate the process by which the present situation has evolved.
In the "Introduction" of this volume Tillich states that the primary
purpose of his lectures on Protestant theology is to show "how we have
arrived' at the present situation," or in other words, "to
understand ourselves.""' The fascination for the past on its own account
is given as a second and subordinate purpose. We have tried to indicate the
primacy of Tillich's existential interest in the historical tradition by
characterizing these lectures as "perspectives." The term
"history," which Tillich requested us not to use, would have
suggested to many people a historiographical treatment less preponderantly
interpretative.
TILLICH AND EARLY CATHOLICISM
The knowledge of Tillich's theology could serve as a prerequisite to an
advanced course in patristic studies, or vice versa. There are many bridges in
Tillich's theology to the traditions of the ancient church. One immediately
thinks, of course, of the centrality of the trinitarian and christological
doctrines in Tillich as well as in the leading church fathers. No doubt it was
Tillich's love for Greek philosophy which pre‑
14 Tillich, The Religious Situation, translated
by H. Richard Niebuhr (Cleveland: Meridian Books, 1956), P. 34.
15 Cf. infra, P.
1.
pared him for a sympathetic
understanding of the development of these dogmas. Quite unlike the great
historians of dogma in the Ritschlian school, especially Adolf von Harnack,
Tillich esteemed the classic dogmas of the Trinity and the Christ very highly as
the appropriate reception of the Christian message in the categories of
Hellenistic philosophy. Harnack's thesis that the "Hellenization of
Christianity" was an intellectualistic distortion of the New Testament
gospel resulted, Tillich claimed, from a misinterpretation of Greek thought.
What Harnack did not understand was that "Greek thought is existentially
concerned with the eternal, in which it seeks for eternal truth and eternal
life.""' On the other hand, Tillich did not believe that the conciliar
formulations of the ancient church were binding on all future theology. The
categories that were used then are not unquestionably valid for our time. His
reconstructions of these dogmas in his Systematic Theology are serious
efforts to get beneath the outer crust of the old forthulas to clear the way
for an understanding of the reality which originally they were meant to protect
from heretical attacks. Critical essays and books have been and will continue
to be written for a long time to come to assess to what extent Tillich
succeeded in reinterpreting the old doctrines of the church.
The concept of the Logos in the
early Greek fathers also found one of its stanchest allies in Tillich. Of all
the leading contemporary theologians, Tillich was the only one who integrated
the Logos doctrine into his own theological system. Without it he could not
have been the apologetic theologian he was. When Tillich referred to himself as
an apologetic theologian, he had in mind the example of the great
second-century apologist, Justin Martyr, for whom the Logos doctrine was, as
for Tillich, the universal principle of the divine self-manifestation. If the
apologist is to answer the questions and accusations of the despisers of
Christianity, he must discover some common ground. The common ground for both
Justin and Tillich was the presence of the Logos beyond the boundaries of the
church, making it possible for men in all religions and cultures to have a
partial grasp of the truth, a love of beauty, and a moral sensitivity. Tillich
could stand "on the
26 Systematic Theology, III, P. 287.
boundary"1 between theology and philosophy, church and society,
religion and culture, because the Logos who became flesh was the same Logos who
was universally at work in the structures of human existence. Ti]lich's
apologetic writing demonstrates how he shared the conviction of the Apologists
that Christians by no means have a monopoly on the truth, and that the truth,
wherever it may be found, essentially belongs to us Christians. The Logos
doctrine saved Tillich's theology from a false particularism that has hampered
so much of the ecclesiastical tradition.
Tillich was never under any illusion that the first five centuries of
the church provide any clear support for Protestantism against Roman
Catholicism. What he stressed instead was how early the formative principles
of Catholicism developed, especially in the defense against the onslaughts of
Gnosticism. The closing of the canon, defining the apostolic tradition, the
rule of faith, the formation of creeds, and also episcopal authority were
developments which occurred very early, and cannot be written off as
aberrations of the 'Dark Ages." Of course, Tillich was never able to
endorse the rise of early Catholicism as an unambiguously salutary occurrence.
in the light of the "Protestant principle" he could point out that
the church paid a dear price in its struggle against heresies. What he called
the heteronomous structures of an authoritarian church, which later resulted in
the church of the Inquisition, had their beginnings in the anti-Gnostic
response of Orthodoxy. Also every definition entails exclusion. When the church
was pressed by heresies to defend itself, it had to define itself. This
self-definition, Tillich believes, inevitably has a narrowing result. "The
whole history of Christian dogma is a continuing narrowing down, but at the
same time a defining. And the definition is important, because without
it many elements would have undercut the whole church, would have denied its
existence. The dogma, therefore, the dogmatic development, is not something
merely lamentable or evil. It was the necessary form by which the church kept
its very identity. . . . The tragic element in all history is that if something
like this must be
17 Tilhich's autobiographical sketch by this title, On
the Boundary (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1966). This edition is
both a revision and a new translation of Part I of The Interpretation of
History.
done, it
immediately has the consequence of narrowing down and excluding very valuable
elements."8 The theologian today has the onerous task of breaking through the
definitions to recover if possible those valuable elements which for tragically
necessary reasons were temporarily excluded. With this sort of dialectical
insight Tillich could affirm that the church was basically correct in each
instance in which it rejected a major heresy, but wrong when its self-defining
formulations became rigid, as in the case of post-Tridentine Roman Catholicism
and Protestant Orthodoxy. There is no solution to this problem of
self-reduction through self-definition except by the continual reformation of
the church (ecciesia semper reformanda).
The two theologians of the ancient church who had the greatest influence
on Tillich were Origen and Augustine. Clearly it was their common bond of
Neo-Platonism which attracted Tillich to their way of thinking. When Tillich
expounded the doctrines of Origen and Augustine, it was often difficult to
distinguish Tillich's own doctrine from theirs.19 This was not simply a case of
Tillich reading his own ideas into Origen and Augustine; I think it was rather
that he had read such ideas out of them, probably at first backtracking his way
from Schelling, through Boehme, German mysticism, medieval Augustinianism, and
early Christian Platonism. At any rate, whatever occasioned his interest in
Origen and Augustine, he felt at home in them.
Origen's mysticism, his understanding of the symbolic significance of
religious language, his doctrines of the Logos, the Trinity, creation, the
transcendental fall, and his eschatology, especially its universalism, were all
features which Tillich was able to adapt to his own systematic theology. I do
not suggest that Tillich did this uncritically. In particular, it was evident
that despite his kindred feeling for Augustine, Til-lich rejected his
conservative philosophy of history, namely that aspect of it which resulted in
the ecclesiastical interpretation of the Kingdom of God as ruling on earth
through the church's hierarchy and its sacramental mediations. This is a
decisive deviation from Augustine. It meant that Tillich could ally himself
more with the prophetic in‑
18 Brown, ed., Ultimate
Concern, pp. 64-65.
19 Tillich's lectures
on the history of Christian thought have been recorded and edited by Peter H.
John, and have circulated on a limited scale among Tillich's students. A new
edition of these lectures will be published soon.
terpretation of
history, receiving its impulses from Joachim of Floris, the radical
Franciscans, and the left-wing Reformers. His own doctrine of the kairos could
hardly be accommodated by the traditional, ecclesiastical interpretation of
history, with its antichiliastic, nonutopian character. For Tillich and the
prophetic line of interpretation the future may be pregnant with a decisively
new meaning for which the past and the present are merely preparations. The
conservative ecclesiastical tendency has always managed to quash too vivid
expectations of the future; such expectations are the spawning bed of
revolutionary attitudes toward the present situation and the church's place in
it.
THEONOMY AND MYsl'jcxsM IN THE
MIDDLE Acns
Moving on to Tillich's interpretation of the Middle Ages, our first
observation must be that he made important contributions toward overcoming the
deep-seated rationalistic and Protestant prejudices against the so-called
"Dark Ages." The one thousand years from Pope Gregory the Great to
Doctor Martin Luther have often been pictured with contempt as a monolithic
age of ignorance, priestly tyranny, and religious superstition. Directly
against this stands the idealized image of the Middle Ages in Romanticism.
Tillich was no romanticist, but he was influenced by its outlook on the Middle
Ages. Christian romanticists look back to the Middle Ages as an ideal unity of
religion and culture, as an organism in which the religious center irradiates
through all forms of cultic, legal, moral, and aesthetic activities. Tillich
could not share the hope of Romanticism to re-create a society according to the
pattern of an idealized Middle Ages. On the other hand, Tillich drew the
inspiration for his own concept of theonomy from this romanticist outlook on
medieval society. "Protestantism cannot accept the medieval pattern either
in Romantic or in Roman terms. It must look forward to a new theonomy. Yet, in
order to do so, it must know what theonomy means, and this it can find in the
Middle Ages."20
Tillich was able to give a sweeping overview of historical periods in
terms of the principles of autonomy, heteronomy, and theonomy.
"The-onomy can characterize a whole culture and give a key to the inter‑
20 Systematic Theology I, p.
149.
pretation of
history."2' The ideal of a theonomous culture can never be
fully realized on earth because of man's existential estrangement that runs
through all history. But there may be partial realizations. Such a culture is
one in which the inner potentialities of man are being fulfilled through the
driving presence of the Spirit, giving power, meaning, and direction to the
autonomous forms of life. Autonomy describes a situation which cuts itself off
from the transcendent source and aim of life. Examples of more or less
autonomous periods are those of skepticism in Greek philosophy, the
Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and present-day secularism. 1-leteronomy
represents the attempt to impose an alien law upon the autonomous structures of
life, demanding unconditional obedience to finite authorities, splitting the
conscience and the inner life. The struggle between the independence of
autonomy and the coercions of heteronomy can only be overcome through a new
theonomy. This is a situation in which religion and culture are not divorced,
where instead, according to one of Tillich's most famous formulations, culture
provides the form of religion, and religion the substance of culture.
Applying these principles to the Middle Ages, Tillich emphasized, not
their homogeneous nature, but the great diversities and transitions within
medieval culture. He contrasted the relative openness of the medieval church
toward a variety of ways of thinking to the narrowness of the church of the
counter-Reformation. The high point of the Middle Ages was attained in the
thirteenth century in the great systems of the Scholastics. Particularly, the
Augustinian line from Anseim of Canterbury to Bonaventura represented a
theonomous style of the-ologizing.
heologizing. Here, beginning with
faith, the mind was opened to perceive the reflections of the divine presence
in all realms and facets of life. The end of the Middle Ages was characterized
by nominalism and heteronomy. The world was split; the realms of religion and
culture were separated. The double-truth theory was invented as a way of
maintaining philosophy and theology side by side, in a state of mutual
contradictoriness. A statement that is true in theology may be false in
philosophy and one that is true in philosophy may be false in theology.
Adherence to the creeds of the church can be maintained only on
21 Systematic Theology, III, p. 250.
the basis of an
absolute authority. This positivistic notion of authority came to clear
expression in Duns Scotus and William of Ockham. The concept of authority
became heteronomous and was applied more and more in a heteronomous way by the
church.
What seems unique in Tillich's interpretation of the Middle Ages is the
fact that he attributed the disintegration of theonomy and the emerging gap
between scientific autonomy and ecclesiastical heteronomy to none other than
Thomas Aquinas. In one of his most self-revealing essays, "The Two Types
of the Philosophy of Religion,"22 he traces the roots of the
modern split between faith and knowledge back to the Thomistic denial of the
Augustinian belief in the immediate presence of Cod in the act of knowing. For
Thomas, Cod is first in the order of being but last in the order of knowledge.
The knowledge of Cod is the end result of a line of reasoning, not the
presupposition of all our knowing. Where reason leaves off, faith takes over.
The act of faith, however, becomes the movement of the will to accept truth on
authority. Tillich's verdict is clear: "This is the final outcome of the
Thornistic dissolution of the Augustinian solution."28
This essay on "The Two Types of the Philosophy of Religion" reveals
how alive the philosophical debates of the Middle Ages were in Tillich's own
thinking. He saw that fundamental issues were being decided with tremendous
consequences for world history. When Tillich lectured on this period, he was no
impartial observer of the debates; he was definitely a passionate participant.
On most issues he took the side of the Augustinians against the Thomists, the
Franciscans against the Dominicans, the realists against the nominalists, etc.
The background to all these controversies was what Tillich called the eternal
dialogue that continues in history between Plato and Aristotle. It is the
dialogue between a philosophy of wisdom (sapientia) and a philosophy of
science (scientia), or as Tillich put it, between the ontological and
the cosmological approaches to God.
Tillich's alliance with the Middle Ages appears also in his high evaluation
of its mysticism. For Tillich there is an ineliminable element of mysticism in
every religion. A question he often posed to his students
22 Theology of
Culture, PP. 10-29.
23 Ibid., P. 19.
was whether
"mysticism can be baptized by Christianity." His answer was
"yes," provided we distinguish between the abstract type of mysticism
of Hinduism and the concrete mysticism of Christianity. Concrete mysticism is
Christ-mysticism. Such a mysticism may be taken up into Christianity as an
historical religion. Without the mystical element in religion Tillich observed
that it becomes reduced to intellectualism or moralism. True doctrines or good
morals become the essence of a religion without the mystical dimension. In this
he agreed basically with Schleiermacher and Rudolf Otto against Kant and
Albrecht Ritschl. He never joined Karl Barth and Emil Brunner in their wholesale
rejection of Christian mysticism. In this regard both Barth and Brunner were
still clinging to the Ritschlian prejudice that Christianity and mysticism are
irreconcilable opposites.
The eradication of all mystical elements in the Christian tradition
would leave us but a torso. In Tillich's judgment this would require getting
rid of half of the apostle Paul's theology, its Spirit-mysticism; the
Christ-mysticism of men like Bernard of Clairvaux whom Luther prized so highly
would have to go; indeed, much of the theology of the young Luther would have
to be cut out, and along with it his understanding of faith. The Christian
tradition would be a vast wasteland without its enrichment through mysticism.
Of all the labels that have been applied to Tillich's theology, none of them
come close to fitting unless they bring out the mystical ontology which
undergirds his whole way of thinking. This is why it is not very revealing to
label Tillich an existentialist as popularly done; it tends to obscure the
underlying essentialism of his reflections on existence. Tillich's doctrine of
existence is cradled within the framework of his mystical ontology. Only from
this perspective should we understand many of Tillich's expressions which have
created either offense or puzzlement, such as "God beyond the God of
theism," "Being itself," "absolute faith,"
"ecstatic naturalism," "belief-ful realism," "symbolic
knowledge," "essentialization," etc. These terms are echoes of
the mystical side of Tillich and of the Christian tradition.
THE REDISCOVERY OF THE PROPHETIC
TRADITION
The mystical side of Tillich's thought was always kept in tension with
the prophetic aspect. Some of his sharpest judgments were made against
mysticism as a way of self-elevation to the divine through ascetic exercises.
In the name of the sola gratia principle of the Reformation he condemned
mysticism as a method of self-salvation. The enigma many have sensed in Paul
Tillich is due to this polygenous character of his thinking. Although his roots
were planted deeply in the soil of neo-Platonic mysticism, German idealism, and
nineteenth-century Protestant liberalism, nevertheless, Tillich placed this
entire heritage under the criticism of the "Protestant principle."
This principle he derived from the Pauline-Lutheran tradition. The estrangement
between God and man is overcome solely on the basis of divine grace, without
any merit or worthiness on man's part. The existential power and theological
relevance of the Reformation doctrine of justification by grace alone through
faith alone was mediated to Paul Tillich by his teacher Martin Kahler. Tillich,
however, radicalized it to meet even the situation of the doubter. "Not
only he who is in sin but also he who is in doubt is justified through faith.
The situation of doubt, even of doubt about Cod, need not separate us from God."24
Tillich bemoaned the fact that modern man can scarcely understand the
meaning of justification. For this reason he exchanged the legal imagery taken
from the courtroom for new expressions borrowed from the psychoanalytic
situation in which the therapist accepts the patient as he is. Justification
by grace through faith is interpreted as our being accepted in spite of the
fact we are unacceptable. The whole gospel is contained in the phrase "in
spite of." In spite of our sin and guilt, in spite of our condemnation and
unbelief, in spite of our doubts and our total unworthiness, the miracle of the
good news is for just such people. "Justification is the paradox that man
the sinner is justified, that man the unrighteous is righteous; that man the
unholy is holy, namely, in the judgment of God, which is not based on any human
achievements but only on the divine, self-surrendering grace. Where this
24 The Protestant
Era, xiv.
The Classical Christian Tradition xxvii
paradox of the divine-human
relationship is understood and accepted, all ideologies are destroyed. Man does
not have to deceive himself about himself, because he is accepted as he is, in
the total perversion of his existence."25
An important part of Paul Tillich's mission to American Protestantism
was to reinterpret in contemporary terms the message of the Reformation. He
felt that American Protestantism had scarcely been touched by the prophetic
message of Luther and Calvin. Lectures he delivered at The Washington Cathedral
Library, Washington, D.C., in 1950, dealt with "The Recovery of the
Prophetic Tradition in the Reformation" and are now published in Volume
VII of the collected works of Paul Tillich in German .211 The great
doctrines of the Reformation, which have become mummified for many of its
heirs, are in Tillich's treatment living symbols of the new relationship to God
which provided the explosive power of Luther's reformatory work. The poignancy
of Tillich's own prophetic criticism of American Protestantism's
pseudo-orthodoxies, shallow liberalisms, and puritan moralisms was due to his
grasp of Luther's message. His observation on Protestant preaching in America
was that it too often tends to make the grace of God, that is, God's attitude
toward man, depend on the individual's moral earnestness, religious devotion,
or true beliefs. The formula "justification by faith" has been
retained, to be sure, but then, as Tillich rightly pointed out, faith is
transformed into a work which a man is exhorted to perform on his own
conscious decision. To avoid this Pelagianizing implication Tillich suggested
that it might help to say justification through faith instead of by faith.
This would mean that faith does not cause but mediates God's
grace. Tillich's little book, Dynamics of Faith,27 was written in part to overcome
dreadful distortions of the concept of faith. Faith is distorted when it is
conceived anthropocentrically as either a knowing (intellectualism) or a doing
(moralism) or a feeling
25 Ibid., p. 170.
26 "Die Wiederentdeckung der prophetischen
Tradition in der Reformation," Der Protestantismus als Kritik und
Gestaltung (Stuttgart: Evangelisches Ver-lagswerk, 1962), Gesammelte
Werke, VII, pp. 171-215. An English version of these lectures
was published; the German edition, however, is by Tillich's request the
authoritative one.
27 New York: Harper
& Row, 1957.
(emotionalism). Tillich's own
definition of faith as a state of being grasped by an ultimate concern was an
attempt to use an expression which suggests that faith involves both the depths
and the totality of the self, and is therefore not merely the function of a
particular faculty of the mind.
The extent of Luther's influence on Tillich's mind cannot be detailed
here. Several connections may, however, be worth a brief mention. Luther said
that what makes a theologian is his ability to distinguish rightly between law
and gospel. This means that like the two natures of Christ, law and gospel must
be differentiated without being separated (Nestorianism) or being confused
(Monophysitism). Tillich rarely ever used the categories of law and gospel as
an explicit theological formula. The structure of his thinking is, however,
clearly patterned after this feature of Luther's theology. It makes its
appearance in Tillich's system as the methodological principle of correlation.
He does not develop a doctrine about law and gospel; instead all his
thinking is structured in terms of it. His essays dealing with theology and
culture, the plan of his Systematic Theology, and all his sermons show
that before he would announce the Christian answer, the kerygma, he would
carefully describe the human predicament. The description of the human
predicament is man's existence under the law; the presentation of the
Christian answer offers the new possibility of life under the gospel. The
sequence is always law before gospel, that is, always the posing of the
question before the attempt to answer. For Tillich this is the proper
theological method, and at just this point he deviated from Karl Barth who
placed the gospel before the law, who spoke of Christ before turning to the
analysis of the actual human situation as man today experiences it. Tillich's
plea for a fruitful correlation between philosophy and theology also rests
upon this law/gospel basis. When he states that philosophy raises the question
which theology must answer, he is saying in another way that the gospel is the
divine response to the questionability of human existence under the law. Philosophy
functions analogously to the law as theology does to the gospel.
Tillich believed that the
"law of contrasts" in Luther's doctrine of God can help to counter
the trend in Protestant theology to rationalize and moralize the picture of
God. This law of contrasts is expressed in a series of terms that must be
maintained in a relation of dialectical
tension to each other:
e.g., the hiddenness of God and the revealedness of God, the wrath of God and
the love of God, the strange work of God (opus alienuin) and the proper
work of God (opus roprium), God's kingdom on the left hand and his
kingdom on the right hand, etc. This style of thinking in terms of dialectical
tension between contrasting concepts also characterized Tillich's theology. One
can see shades of this in Tillich's analysis of the ontological polarities in
the depth of the divine life and in his trinitarian principles. The difference,
of course, between Tillich and Luther must also be acknowledged. Between them
stood Jacob Boehme who through German classical idealism, especially Schelling,
provided Tillich with a powerful model of dialectical thinking in
mystical-ontological categories. Thus, for example, Luther's idea of the devil
as the agent of God's wrath makes its appearance in the tradition of mystical
theology, running from Boehme through Schelling to Tillich, as a negative
principle, as the principle of nonbeing, gnawing at the foundations of reality.
Also the mystical feeling for depth is brought out by the idea of the abyss in
the divine life, the Ungrund in Boehme's language. Tillich saw that both
Luther and Boehme's ideas of God had their common background in late medieval
mysticism as expressed, for example, in the Theologia Gerinanica. He
drew upon this tradition in protesting the reduction of the picture of God in
late nineteenth-century Protestantism to the simple image of a loving father.
Hence, for Tillich the symbol of the wrath of God was not merely an outdated
notion of primitive mythology that can be excised from our picture of God.
Tillich was always grateful to Rudolf Otto's book, The Idea of the Holy, for
making him more deeply aware of the abysmal mystery of God, the mysterium
tremendum et fascinosuin. And on this point he was convinced that Otto was
a better interpreter of Luther's theology than the leading Ritschlians had
been.
FROM ORTHODOXY TO NEO-ORTHODOXY
The
rest of the story of Tillich as an interpreter of the Christian tradition can
be had by reading this book. Although its title promises to bring out Tillich's
perspectives on theology in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, he
actually reaches back to the period of Protestant
Orthodoxy to begin his
account of the development. He lays out the main principles of theology in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The period of Protestant Scholasticism
did not evoke in Tillich, as in many of his contemporaries, a feeling of
revulsion. He ranked it as part of the "classical tradition," not as
an aberration from which we have nothing to learn. Not the theologians of
Orthodoxy but their modern imitators were the butt of Tillich's scorn. The
original pietists, men like Spener and Zinzendorf, were likewise not to be
disparaged, only their followers who tried to make a method out of their piety.
In numerous places in Tillich's writings he shows how he would mediate between
Orthodoxy and Pietism on the question whether theology could be done only by
those who are regenerated.28 His answer was that the Pietists were
right in stressing that theology involves existential commitment, but wrong in
making that commitment a matter of absolute certainty. This leads to
subjectivism in theology against which the Orthodox theologians rightly
protested.
One
of Tillich's most provocative theses in this book states that mysticism is the
mother of rationalism. Both have in common a subjectivist outlook; the
"inner light," by a slight shift of emphasis, becomes the autonomous
reason. This hypothesis can perhaps best be tested by examining to see to what
extent the pietists and the rationalists allied themselves in the attack on
Orthodoxy and to what extent rationalism prospered most where Pietism had
gained the strongest foothold. The exact nature of the alliance would be an
interesting subject for careful historical research.
The
sections on Schleiermacher and Hegel are revealing of Tillich's indebtedness to
them. It must be remembered that Tillich kept alive the memory of these figures
at a time when it was generally popular in theology to debunk them.
Schleiermacher was glibly dismissed as a mystic and Hegel as a speculative
philosopher. SØren Kierkegaard's verdict on Hegel was accepted by many as the
last word, and Emil Brunner's book on Schleiermacher charged the ills of modem
Protestantism to his account .29 Tillich used to recall how
hostile the reaction was during the twenties and thirties to his seminars on
these men. It
28 Systematic
Theology, I, p. 11.
29 Die Mystik und das Wort
(Tubingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1924).
The Classical Christian Tradition xxxi
is to Tillich's
credit that he maintained for himself and imparted to others a sense of balance
toward the era of liberalism. Today there is a renewed interest in the thought
of both Schleiermacher and Hegel, not only for historical reasons, but also for
their constructive theological significance. The new affirmation of Hegel,
that is, the early Hegel, in German theology is a movement with which he was
not intimately acquainted, but with which, nonetheless, his own theology has
certain strong affinities.30
Tillich's attitude toward liberalism was dialectical. When he first became
known in America, he tended to be classified with the neo-ortho-dox movement.
He shared its critique of the liberal doctrine of progress and sounded similar
notes on man's radical estrangement. He attacked the illusory schemes of
self-salvation and pointed to the grace of God, to the new being in Christ, and
to the Kingdom of Cod beyond history as the source of man's hope for a real
fulfillment. The brand of liberalism he most readily rejected was the
reduction of Christianity to the religion of Jesus. Liberalism's attempt to
apply the methods of higher criticism to recover the historical Jesus beneath
the various apostolic portraitures of Jesus as the Christ provided no adequate basis
for Christian faith. He pronounced the search for the historical Jesus a
failure, and believed that Bultmann's skepticism toward the sources was largely
justified. In his student days the ascendant form of liberalism was the
Ritschlian school. Tillich could never share the basic outlook of the
Ritschlian theologians, neither their antimetaphysical bias nor their rejection
of mysticism, neither their "back to Kant" posture nor their
ethicization of Christianity. The University of Marburg was the center of the
Kant-Ritschl sphere of influence. Tillich came from the University of Halle,
where the traditions of German classical idealism and the theology of
revivalism or pietism were mediated to him by his professors of philosophy and
theology, the most often acknowledged of whom was Martin Kähler. This
difference between Haile and Marburg symbolizes, perhaps even accounts for,
the opposition between Tillich and Bultmann, the Marburg professor of New
Testament. Bultmann was trained under Wilhelm Herrmann, who tended to teach
dogmatics in
30 Inter cilia, Jurgen Moitmanu,
Wolf-Dieter Marsch, also Wolfhart Pannen-berg.
the form of
ethics. Tillich criticized Bultmann's demythologizing of the New Testament
because only its ethical symbolism remains in his existentialist
interpretation. The cosmic symbolism drops out of sight; it is removed as so
much primitive mythology. Tillich, the ontologist par excellence, was
passionately interested in the cosmic symbols. Therefore, demythologizing for
Tillich did not mean the removal of such symbols, but deliteralization and
interpretation. Since ethics is the focus of Bultmann's interpretation, the
basic appeal is for decision; his is a theology of decision. By marked contrast
Tillich's interpretation is in terms of ontological categories; he spoke of
participatioli in the reality becoming transparent through the symbols. The
idea of participation suggests that even the dimension of the unconscious is
involved in the religious act; the idea of decision confines the religious act
to the level of consciousness. In this light we can understand why Tillich's
thinking was thoroughly sacramental; the decisionism of existentialist theology,
on the other hand, leaves no room for the sacramental aspects of religion.
The main body of this volume deals with the great prophetic voices of
the nineteenth century. Many of these were on the fringes of the Christian
tradition, some even among its most bitter opponents. Til-lich's selective
treatment of this period focuses on the critical thrust from the philosophical
side. He leaves largely out of account the de-velopments
evelopments in historical
criticism, the investigation of the origins of primitive Christianity; also he
pays little attention to the reconstructions of church doctrine that were being
advanced by professional theologians. The reason for this selectivity is
Tillich's conviction that the impetus to historical research and doctrinal
reformulation came from changes in philosophical outlook. One has only to think
of the dependence of historical Critics like David F. Strauss and Ferdinand C.
Baur on Hegel's philosophy of history, or of the dependence of dogmatic
theologians like Alexander Schweizer and J. C. K. vori Hofmann on
Schleier-macher's philosophy of religion. The greatness of Tillich's interpretation
lies in his masterful ability to detect and trace out the repercussions of a
philosophical concept upon the subsequent course of things.
The more immediate reason, however, for slanting the selection toward
the philosophical challenges to Christian theology was Tillich's
The Classical Christian Tradition xxxiii
own mind-set and
vocational self-understanding. He communicated best with persons of a
philosophical orientation and he had an almost evangelistic zeal to recommend
the Christian message to the intellectual doubters and scoffers of the faith.
His account of the nineteenth-century critics of Christianity is
simultaneously a revelation of Tillich's intellectual autobiography; it serves
as a mirroring of Tillich's dialogue with the radical questions which modern
culture places on the theological agenda. I think it provides documentary
evidence of the assertion that Tillich was a radical theologian who
searched into the depths of the tradition to find positive answers to
the questions of modern man. One of his last statements confirms this estimate
of his own theological intention: "I presuppose in my theological thinking
the entire history of Christian thought up until now, and I consider the
attitude of those people who are in doubt or estrangement or opposition to
everything ecclesiastical and religious, including Christianity. And I have to
speak to them. My work is with those who ask questions, and for them I am
here."3'
Tillich's
career was begun when liberal theology was on the wane; he lived through the
transitions of theology from the rise of "crisis" theology to its
transformation by Barth into neo-orthodoxy, and from the decline of Barth's
influence to the paramountcy of Bultmannianism after World War II. In half a
century theology had gone a full cycle; Tillich observed the signs of the
revival of liberalism. In his last Chicago address entitled "The
Significance of the History of Religions for the Systematic Theologian,"
Tillich turned to the question of the future of theology. He saw that we were
standing at a kind of crossroads. Theology could go with the secular group
down a road strewn with the paradoxes of "a religion of non-religion"
or of a "theology-without-God language,"32 or it could
take an opposite route toward a theology of the history of religions. Tillich's
hope for the future of theology was the latter. He saw no promising future for
theology if it clings to the exclusive attitudes of neo-orthodoxy or joins the
"death of God" group. Theology would have to meet a new
challenge: "Therefore, as theologians, we have to break through two
barriers against a
31 Brown, ed., Ultimate
Concern, p. 191.
32 The Future of
Religions, p. 80.
xxxiv A History of Christian Thought
free approach
to the history of religions: the orthodox-exclusive one and the
secular-rejective one .1133 A theology fully informed by the universal revelation of God in the
history of religions and purified by the concrete event on which Christianity
as a particular religion is based points to a way beyond these two barriers. A
religion which combines both the universal and concrete aspects Tillich called
"The Religion of the Concrete Spirit."34
Tillich's vision of the future of theology was formed in part through
his association with Professor Mircea Eliade in their joint seminars on
"History of Religions and Systematic Theology" in 1964. Eliade
reports how Tillich opened his mind to the new stimulus from the side of the
history of religions. For Tillich, Eliade states, this was an occasion for the
"renewal of his own Systematic Theology.1135 He did not
ask his theological students to look upon his system of theology as an
achievement that could not be transcended. To the end Tillich displayed an
amazing freedom to press beyond the limits of his own system and to point out
new options for theology. Eliade's picture of Til-lich in their seminars is the
way Tillich himself would have had us remember him; it is the picture of
"how Tillich was fighting his way to a new understanding of systematic
theology."86
33 Ibid., p. 83.
34 Ibid., . 87.
8 "Pau1Filhich and the
History of Religions," op. cit., p. 33. 86 Ibid.,
p. 35.
PART I Introduction:The
Concept of Dogma
ALL human experience implies the element of thought, simply because the
intellectual or spiritual life of man is embodied in his language. Language is
thought expressed in words spoken and heard. There is no human existence
without thought. The emotionalism that is so rampant in religion is not more
but less than thinking, and reduces religion to the level of sub-human
experience of reality.
Schleiermacher emphasized the function of "feeling" in
religion and Hegel emphasized "thought", giving rise to the tension
between them. Hegel said that even dogs have feeling, but man has thought.
This was based on an unintentional misunderstanding of what Schleiermacher
meant by "feeling", one that we often find repeated even today. Yet
it expresses the truth that man cannot be without thought. He must think even
if he is a most pious Christian without any theological education. Even in religion
we give names to special objects; we distinguish acts of the divine; we relate
symbols to each other and explain their meanings. There is language in every
religion, and where there is language there are universals or concepts that
one must use even at the most primitive level of thought. It is interesting
that this conflict between Hegel and Schleiermacher was anticipated already in
the third century by Clement of Alexandria who said that if animals had a
religion, it would be mute, without words.
Reality precedes thought; it is equally true, however, that thought
shapes reality. They are interdependent; one cannot be abstracted from the
other. We should remember this when we come to the discussions on the trinity
and christology. Here on the basis of much thought the church fathers made
decisions
which have influenced the life of all Christians ever since, even the
most primitive.
There is also the development of methodological thought which proceeds
according to the rules of logic and uses methods in order to deal with
experiences. When this methodological thought is expressed in speaking or
writing and communicated to other people, it produces theological doctrines.
This is a development beyond the more primitive use of thought. Ideally such a
development leads to a theological system. Now a system is not something in
which to dwell. Everyone who dwells within a system feels after some time that
it becomes a prison. If you produce a systematic theology, as I have done, you
try to go beyond it in order not to be imprisoned in it. Nevertheless, the
system is necessary because it is the form of consistency. I have found that
students who express the greatest misgivings about the systematic character of
my theology are the very ones who are most impatient when discovering two of my
statements that contradict each other. They are unhappy to find one point in
which the hidden system has a gap. But when I develop the system further to
close this gap, they feel that is a mean attempt on my part to imprison them.
This is a very interesting double reaction. Yet it is understandable, because
if the system is taken as a final answer, it becomes even worse than a prison.
If we understand the system, however, as an attempt to bring theological
concepts to a consistent form of expression in which there are no
contradictions, then we cannot avoid it. Even if you think in fragments, as
some philosophers and theologians (and some great Ones) have done, then each
fragment implicitly contains a system. When you read the fragments of
Nietzsche—in my opinion the greatest fragmentist in philosophy—you can find
implied in each of them a whole system of life. So a system cannot be avoided
unless you choose to make nonsensical or self-contradictory statements. Of
course, this is sometimes done.
The system has the
danger not only of becoming a prison, but also of moving within itself. It may
separate itself from reality and become something which is, so to speak, above
the reality it is supposed to describe. Therefore, my interest is not so much
in the systems as such, but in their power to express the reality of the church
and its life.
The doctrines of the church
have been called dogmas. In
former times this type
of course used to be called "the history of dogma". Now we call it
"the history of Christian thought", but this is only a change in
name. Actually, nobody would dare to present a complete history of what every
theologian in the Christian Church has thought. That would be an ocean of contradictory
ideas. The purpose of this course is quite different, namely, to show those
thoughts which have become accepted expressions of the life of the church. This
is what the word "dogma" originally meant.
The concept of dogma is one of those things which stand between the
church and the secular world. Most secular people are afraid of the dogmas of
the church, and not only secular people but also members of the churches
themselves. "Dogma" is like a red cloth waved before the bull in a
bull fight; it provokes anger or aggressiveness, and in some cases flight. I
think the latter is most often the case with secular people in relation to the
church. To understand this we have to examine the history of the concept of
dogma, which is very interesting.
The first step in this history is the use 'of "dogma" derived
from the Greek word dokein, which means "to think, imagine, or hold
an opinion". In the schools of Greek philosophy preceding Christianity dogmata
were the doctrines which differentiated the various schools from each
other, the Academics (Plato), the Peripatetics (Aristotle), the Stoics, the
Skeptics, and the Pythagoreans. Each of these schools had its own fundamental
doctrines. If someone wanted to become a member of one of these schools, he had
to accept at least the basic presuppositions which distinguished that school
from the others. So even the philosophical schools were not without their dogmata.
In similar fashion the Christian doctrines were understood as dogmata
which distinguished the Christian school from the philosophical schools.
This was accepted as natural; it was not like a red cloth which produces anger.
The Christian dogma in the early period was the expression of what Christians
accepted when they entered Christian congregations, at great risk and with a
tremendous transformation of their lives. So a dogma was never just a
theoretical statement by an individual; it was the expression of a reality, the
reality of the church.
Secondly, all dogmas were formulated negatively, that is, as reactions
against misinterpretations from inside the church.
This is true even of the Apostles' Creed. Take the
first article of the Creed, "I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker
of heaven and earth." This is not simply a statement that says something
in itself. It is at the same time the rejection of dualism, formulated after a
life-and-death struggle of a hundred years. The same is true of the other
dogmas. The later they are, the more clearly they show this negative character.
We may call them protective doctrines, for they were intended to protect the
substance of the biblical message. To an extent the substance was fluid; of
course, there was a fixed core, the confession that Jesus was the Christ. But
beyond this everything was in motion. When new doctrines arose which seemed to
undercut the fundamental confession, the protective doctrines were added to
it. In this way the dogmas arose. Luther recognized this fact that the dogmas
were not the result of a theoretical interest, but arose from the need to
protect the Christian substance.
Since each new protective statement was itself subject
to misinterpretation, there was always the need for sharper theoretical
formulations. In order to do this it was necessary to use philosophical terms.
This is how the many philosophical concepts entered into the Christian dogmas.
It was not that people were interested in them as philosophical concepts.
Luther was very frank about this; he openly declared that he disliked terms
like "trinity", "homoousios", etc., but he admitted
that they must be used, however unfortunate, because we have no better ones.
Theoretical formulations must be made when other people formulate doctrines
theoretically in such a way that the substance seems to be endangered.
The next step in the history of this concept was for
dogmas to become accepted as canon law by the church. Law according to the
canon is the rule of thought or behavior. Canon law is the ecclesiastical law
to which everybody who belongs to the church must subject himself. Thus the
dogma receives a legal sanction. In the Roman Church the dogma is part of canon
law; its authority comes from the legal realm. This is in line with the
general development of the Roman Church; the word "Roman" has the
connotation of legalistic development.
However, the tremendous reaction against dogma in the
last four centuries would perhaps not have been created without one further
step: the ecclesiastical law became accepted as civil law
by medieval society.
This meant that the person who breaks the canonic law of doctrines is not only
a heretic, one who disagrees with the fundamental doctrines of the church, but
he is also a criminal against the state. It is this last point which has
produced the radical reaction in modern times against dogma. Since the heretic
undermines not only the church but also the state, he must be not only
excommunicated but also delivered into the hands of the civil authorities to be
punished as a criminal. It was this state of the dogma against which the
Enlightenment was fighting. The Reformation itself was still pretty much in
line with the prior development of dogma. But certainly since the Enlightenment
all liberal thinking has been characterized by the attempt to avoid dogma. This
trend was also supported by the development of science. Science and philosophy
had to be given complete freedom in order to make possible their creative
growth.
In his famous History of Dogma Adolph von Harnack raised the
question whether dogiiia has not come to an end in view of its dissolution in
the early period of the Enlightenment. He concedes that there is still dogma
in orthodox Protestantism, but he believes that the last step in the history of
dogma was reached when the Protestant dogma was dissolved by the Enlightenment.
Since then there is really no dogma in Protestantism. Now this implies a very
narrow concept of dogma, and Harnack is aware that he is using the concept in a
narrow sense, namely, in the sense of the christological-trinitarian doctrine
of the ancient church. Reinhold Seeberg emphasized that, on the contrary, the
dogmatic development did not end with the coming of the Enlightenment, but is
still going on.
Here we face a very important systematic question. Are there any dogmas
in present-day Protestantism? Those of you who enter the ministry must take
some kind of examination by the church, which is not so much an examination of
knowledge as of faith. The churches want to know whether you agree with their
fundamental dogmatic tenets. They often conduct these examinations in a very
narrow way, without much understanding of the developments in theology since
Protestant Orthodoxy. Many students have an inner revolt against these
examinations of faith, but you should not forget that you are entering a
particular group which is different from other groups. First of all, it is a
Christian and not a pagan group; or it is a Protestant and not a
Catholic group; and
within Protestantism it could be either an Episcopalian or a Baptist group. Now
this means that the church has a justified interest in having those who
represent it show some acceptance of its foundations. Every baseball team
demands that its members accept its rules and standards. Why should the church
leave it completely to the arbitrary feelings of the individual? This is
impossible.
It is one of the tasks of systematic theology to help the churches to
solve this problem in a way which is not too narrow-minded and not dependent on
the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century theologians. There is some fundamental
point which is accepted if somebody accepts the church. I believe that it is
not a matter of the church requiring its ministers to accept a series of dogmas.
How could they honestly say that they have no doubts about any of these dogmas?
If they had no doubts, they would hardly be very good Christians, because the
intellectual life is as ambiguous as the moral life. And who would call
himself morally perfect? How then could someone call himself intellectually
perfect? The element of doubt is an element in faith itself. What the church
should do is to accept someone who says that the faith for which the church
stands is a matter of his ultimate concern, which he wants to serve with all
his strength. But if he is asked to say what he believes about this or that
doctrine, he is driven into a kind of dishonesty. If he says he agrees
completely with a given doctrine, for example, the doctrine of the
Virgin Birth, either he is dishonest or he must cease to think. If he cannot
cease to think, he must also doubt. That is the problem. I think the only
solution on Protestant soil is to say that this whole set of doctrines
represents one's own ultimate concern, that one desires to serve in this group
which has this basis as its ultimate concern. But one can never promise not to
doubt any one of these particular doctrines.
The dogma should not be abolished but interpreted in such a way that it
is no longer a suppressive power which produces dishonesty or flight. Instead
it is a wonderful and profound expression of the actual life of the church. In
this sense I will try to show that in discussing these dogmas, even when they
are expressed in the most abstract formulations by means of difficult Creek
concepts, we are dealing with those things which the church believed to be the
most adequate expression for its life and devotion in its life-and-death
struggle against the pagan and
xlii Introduction: The Concept of Dogma
Jewish worlds outside, and against all the disintegrating tendencies
which appeared inside. My conclusion is that we should estimate the dogma very
highly; there is something great about it. But it should not be taken as a set
of particular doctrines to which one must subscribe. This is against the spirit
of the dogma, against the spirit of Christianity.
CHAPTER
I The
Preparation for Christianity
A. THE Kairos
ACCORDING to the apostle
Paul there does not always exist the possibility that that can happen which,
for example, happened in the appearance of Jesus as the Christ. This happened
in one special moment of history when everything was ready for it to happen. We
will now discuss the "readiness". Paul speaks of the kairos in
describing the feeling that the time was ripe, mature, or prepared. This Greek
word is an example of the richness of the Greek language in comparison with
the poverty of modern languages. We have only one word for "time".
The Greeks had two words, chronos and kairos. Chronos is clock
time, time which is measured, as we have it in words like
"chronology" and "chronometer". Kairos is not the
quantitative time of the clock, but the qualitative time of the occasion, the
right time. (Cf. its use in some of the Gospel stories.) There are things that
happen when the right time, the kairos, has not yet come. Kairos is
the time which indicates that something has happened which makes an action
possible or impossible. We all experience moments in our lives when we feel
that now is the right time to do something, now we are mature enough, now we
can make the decision. This is the kairos. It was in this sense that
Paul and the early church spoke of the kairos, the right time for the
coming of the Christ. The early church, and Paul to a certain extent, tried to
show why the time in which Christ appeared was the right time, how his
appearance was made possible by a providential constellation of factors.
What we must do now is to show
the preparation for Christian
2 A
History of Christian Thought
theology in the world
situation into which Jesus came. We will do this from a theological point of
view—there are others—and thus provide an understanding of the possibilities of
a Christian theology. It is not as if the revelation from Christ fell down like
a stone from heaven, as some theologians seem to believe. "Here it is; you
must take it or leave it." This is contrary to Paul. Actually there is a
universal revelatory power going through all history and preparing for that
which Christianity considers to be the ultimate revelation.
B. THE UNIVERSALISM OF THE ROMAN
EMPIRE
The actual situation
into which the New Testament event came was the universalism of the Roman
Empire. This meant something negative and positive at the same time.
Negatively it meant the breakdown of national religions and cultures.
Positively it meant that the idea of mankind as a whole could be conceived at
that time. The Roman Empire produced a definite consciousness of world
history, in contrast to accidental national histories. World history is now not
only a purpose which will be actualized in history, in the sense of the
prophets; instead it has become an empirical reality. This is the positive
meaning of Rome. Rome represents the universal monarchy in which the whole
known world is united. This idea has been taken over by the Roman Church, but
applied to the pope. It is still actual in the Roman Church; it means that Rome
still claims the monarchic power over all the world, following the Roman Empire
in this. It is perhaps an important remark generally that we should never
forget that the Roman Church is Roman, that the development of this
church is influenced not only by Christianity but also by the Roman Empire, by
its greatness and by its idea of law. The Roman Church took over the heritage
of the Roman Empire. We should never forget this fact. If we are tempted to
evaluate the Roman Church more highly than we should, we ought to ask ourselves:
how many Roman elements are in it, and to what extent are they valid for
us in our culture? We should do the same thing with the Greek philosophical
concepts which created the Christian dogma. To what degree are they valid
today? Of course, it is not necessary to reject something simply because it
happens to be Roman or Greek, but neither is it necessary to
The Preparation for Christianity 3
accept something which the church
has derived from Rome or Greece, even if sanctioned by a dogmatic decision.
C. HELLENISTIC PIuLosoPnY
Within this realm of one world,
of a world history and monarchy created by Rome, we have Creek thought. This is
the Hellenistic period of Greek philosophy. We distinguish the classical period
of Greek thought, which ends with the death of Aristotle, from the Hellenistic
period which includes the Stoics, Epicureans, Neo-Pythagoreans, Skeptics, and
Neo-Platonists. This Hellenistic period is the immediate source of much of
Christian thought. It was not so much classical Greek thinking but Hellenistic
thought which influenced early Christianity.
Again I want to distinguish the
negative and the positive elements in Greek thought in the period of the kairos,
the period of the ancient world corning to an end. The negative side is
what we would call Skepticism. Skepticism, not only in the school of the
Skeptics but also in the other schools of Greek philosophy, is the end of the
tremendous and admirable attempt to build a world of meaning on the basis of an
interpretation of reality in objective and rational terms. Greek philosophy had
undercut the ancient mythological and ritual traditions. At the time of
Socrates and the Sophists it became obvious that these traditions were not
valid any more. Sophism is the revolution of the subjective mind against the
old traditions. But life must go on; the meaning of life in all realms had yet
to be probed, in politics, law, art, social relations, knowledge, religion,
etc. This the Greek philosophers tried to do. They were not people sitting
behind their desks writing philosophical books. If they had done nothing but
philosophize about philosophy, we would have forgotten their names long ago.
But they were people who took upon themselves the task of creating a spiritual
world by observing reality objectively as it was given to them, interpreting it
in terms of analytic and synthetic reason.
1. Skepticism
This
great attempt of the Greek philosophers to create a world of meaning broke down
at the end of the ancient world and
4 A
History of Christian Thought
produced what I call the
skeptical end of the ancient development. Originally skepsis meant "observing"
things. But it has received the negative sense of looking at every dogma,
even the dogmata of the Greek schools of philosophy, and thereby
undercutting them. The Skeptics were those who doubted the statements of all
schools of philosophy. What is perhaps even more important is that these
schools of philosophy, for example, the Platonic Academy, took a lot of these
skeptical elements into themselves. Skepticism did not go beyond probabilism,
while the other schools became pragmatic. Thus a skeptical mood entered all the
schools and permeated the whole life of the later ancient world. This
skepticism was a very serious matter of life. Again it was not a matter of
sitting behind one's desk and finding out that everything can be doubted. That
is comparatively easy. Rather, it was an inner breakdown of all convictions.
The consequence was—and this was very characteristic of the Greek mind—that if
they were no longer able to render theoretical judgments, they believed that
they could not act practically either. Therefore, they introduced the doctrine
of epoche, which
meant "restraining, keeping down, neither making a judgment nor acting,
deciding neither theoretically nor practically." This doctrine of epoche meant the resignation of judgment
in every respect. For this reason these people went into the desert with a suit
or gown. The later Christian monks followed them in this respect, because they
also were in despair over the possibility of living in this world. Some of the
skeptics of the ancient church were very serious people, and drew the
consequences which our snobbistic skeptics today are usually unwilling to do,
who have a very good time while doubting everything. The Greek skeptics retired
from life in order to be consistent.
This
element of skepticism was an important preparation for Christianity. The Greek
schools, the Epicureans, Stoics, Academics, Peripatetics, Neo-Pythagoreans,
were not only schools in the sense in which we today speak of philosophical
schools, for example, the school of Dewey or Whitehead. A Greek philosophical
school was also a cultic community; it was half-ritual and half-philosophical
in character. These people wanted to live according to the doctrines of their
masters. During this period when the skeptical mood permeated the ancient
world, they wanted certainty above all; they demanded it in order to live.
The Preparation for Christianity 5
Their answer was that
their great teachers, Plato or Aristotle, Zeno the Stoic or Epicurus, and at a
later time, Plotinus, were not merely thinkers or professors, but they were
inspired men. Long before Christianity the idea of inspiration was developed
in these Greek schools; the founders of these schools were inspired. When
members of these schools later entered into discussion with Christians, they
said, for example, that Heraditus, not Moses, was inspired. This doctrine of
inspiration gave Christianity also a chance to enter into the world. Pure
reason alone is not able to build up a reality in which one can live.
What
was said about the character of the founders of these philosophical schools was
very similar to what the Christians also said about the founder of their
church. It is interesting that a man like Epicurus—who later was so much
attacked by the Christians that only some of his fragments remain—was called soter
by his pupils. This is the Greek word which the New Testament uses and
which we translate as "savior". Epicurus the philosopher was called a
savior. What does this mean? He is usually regarded as a man who always had a
good time in his beautiful gardens and who taught an anti-Christian hedonistic
philosophy. The ancient world thought quite differently about Epicurus. He was
called soter because he did the greatest thing anyone could do for his
followers: he liberated them from anxiety. Epicurus, with his materialistic
system of atoms, liberated them from the fear of demons which permeated the
whole life of the ancient world. This shows what a serious thing philosophy was
at that time.
Another
consequence of this skeptical mood was what the Stoics called apatheia (apathy),
which means being without feelings toward the vital drives of life such as
desires, joys, pains, and instead being beyond all these in the state of
wisdom. They knew that only a few people could reach this state. Those who went
into the desert as Skeptics showed that they were able to do so to a certain
extent. Behind all this, of course, stands the earlier criticism of the
mythological gods and the traditional rites. The criticism of mythology
happened in Greece about the same time that Second Isaiah did it in Judea. It
was a very similar kind of criticism and had the effect of undercutting the
belief in the gods of polytheism.
6 A
History of Christian Thought
2. The Platonic Tradition
We have dealt with the negative side in Greek thought at the time of the
kairos. But there were also some positive elements. First we will take
up the Platonic tradition. The idea of transcendence, that there is something
that surpasses empirical reality, was prepared for Christian theology in the
Platonic tradition. Plato spoke of essential reality, of 'ideas" (ousia)
as the true essences of things. At the same time we find in Plato, and even
stronger in later Platonism and Neo-Platonism, a trend toward the devaluation
of existence. The material world has no ultimate value in comparison with the
essential world. Also in Plato the inner aim of human existence is
described—somewhere in the Philebus, but also practically
everywhere in Plato—as becoming similar to God as much as possible. God is the
spiritual sphere. The inner telos of human existence is participation in
the spiritual, divine sphere as much as possible. This element in the Platonic
tradition was used especially by the Cappadocian Fathers of the church to
describe the ultimate aim of human existence.
A third doctrine besides the idea of transcendence and the telos of
human existence described the soul as falling down from an eternal
participation in the essential or spiritual world, being on earth in a body,
then trying to get rid of its bondage to the body, and finally reaching an
elevation above the material world. This happens in steps and degrees. This
element was also taken into the church, not only by all Christian mystics, but
also by the official church fathers to a great extent.
The fourth point in which the Platonic tradition was important was its
idea of providence. This seems to us to be a Christian idea, but it was already
formulated by Plato in his later writings. It was a tremendous attempt to
overcome the anxiety of fate md death in the ancient world. In the late ancient
world the anxiety of accident and necessity, or fate, as we would call it
today, represented by the Greek goddesses Tyche and Hairnarinene, was
a very powerful thing. In Romans 8, where we have the greatest hymn of triumph
in the New Testament, we hear that it is the function of Christ to overcome the
demonic forces of fate. The fact that Plato anticipated this situation by his
doctrine of providence is one of his greatest contributions. This providence,
coming from
The Preparation for Christianity 7
the highest god, gives us the
courage to escape the vicissitudes of fate.
A
fifth element was added to the Platonic tradition which came from Aristotle.
The divine is a form without matter, perfect in itself. This is the profoundest
idea in Aristotle. This highest form, called "God", is moving the
world, not causally by pushing it from the outside, but by driving everything
finite toward him by means of love. In spite of his apparently scientific
attitude toward reality, Aristotle developed one of the greatest systems of
love. He said that God, the highest form, or pure actuality (actus purus), as
he called it, moves everything by being loved by everything. Everything has
the desire to unite itself with the highest form, to get rid of the lower forms
in which it lives, where it is in the bondage of matter. Later
the Aristotelian God, as the highest form, entered into Christian theology and exerted
a tremendous influence upon it.
3. The
Stoics
The
Stoics were more important than Plato and Aristotle together for the life of
the late ancient world. The life of the educated man in the ancient world at
this time was shaped mostly by the Stoic tradition. In my book, The Courage
to Be, I have dealt with the Stoic idea of the courage to take fate
and death upon oneself. There I show that Christianity and the Stoics are the
great competitors in the whole Western world. But here I want to show something
else. Christianity took from its great competitor many fundamental ideas. The
first is the doctrine of the Logos, a doctrine that may bring you to despair
when you study the history of trinitarian and christologieal thought. The
dogmatic development of Christianity cannot be understood without it.
Logos
means "word". But it also refers to the meaning of a word, the
reasonable structure which is indicated by a word. Therefore, Logos can also
mean the universal law of reality. This is what Heraclitus meant by it, who was
the first to use this word philosophically. The Logos for him was the law which
determines the movements of all reality.
For
the Stoics the Logos was the divine power which is present in everything that
is. There are three aspects to it, all of which become extremely important in
the later development. The first
8 A
History of Christian Thought
is the law of nature.
The Logos is the principle according to which all natural things move. It is
the divine seed, the creative divine power, which makes anything what it is.
And it is the creative power of movement of all things. Secondly, Logos means
the moral law. With Immanuel Kant we could call this the "practical
reason", the law which is innate in every human being when he accepts
himself as a personality, with the dignity and greatness of a person. When we
see the term "natural law" in classical books, we should not think of
physical laws, but of moral laws. For example, when we speak of the
"rights of man" as embodied in the American Constitution, we are
speaking of natural law.
Thirdly,
Logos also means man's ability to recognize reality; we could call it
"theoretical reason". It is man's ability to reason. Because man has
the Logos in himself, he can discover it in nature and history. From this it
follows for Stoicism that the man who is determined by the natural law, the
Logos, is the loikos, the wise man. But the Stoics were not optimists.
They did not believe that everybody was a wise man. Perhaps there were only a
few who ever reached this ideal. All the others were either fools or stood
somewhere between the wise and the foolish. So Stoicism held a basic pessimism
about the majority of human beings.
Originally
the Stoics were Greeks; later they were Romans. Some of the most famous Stoics
were Roman emperors, for example, Marcus Aurelius. They applied the concept of
the Logos to the political situation for which they were responsible. The
meaning of the natural law was that every man participates in reason by virtue
of the fact that he is a human being. From this basis they derived laws far
superior to many that we find in the Christian Middle Ages. They gave universal
citizenship to every human being because everyone potentially participates in
reason. Of course, they did not believe that people were actually reasonable,
but they presupposed that through education they could become so. Granting
Roman citizenship to all citizens of the conquered nations was a tremendous
equalizing step. Women, slaves, and children, who were regarded as inferior
beings under the old Roman law, became equalized by the laws of the Roman
emperors. This was done not by Christianity but by the Stoics, who derived this
idea from their belief in the universal Logos in which everyone participates.
(Of course, Christianity holds the
The Preparation for Christianity 9
same idea on a different basis:
all human beings are the children of God the Father.) Thus the Stoics conceived
of the idea of a state embracing the whole world, based on the common rationality
of everybody. This was something which Christianity could take up and develop.
The difference was that the Stoics did not have the concept of sin. They had
the concept of foolishness, but not sin. Therefore, salvation in Stoicism is a
salvation through reaching wisdom. In Christianity salvation is brought about
by divine grace. These two approaches are in conflict with each other to the
present day.
4. Eclecticism
Eclecticism
is another reality which was taken over by the Christian Church. This comes
from a Greek word meaning to choose some possibilities out of many. Americans
should not have contempt for this because in this respect as in so many others
they are like the ancient Romans. The Eclectics were not creative philosophers
like the Greeks. The Roman thinkers were often at the same time politicians and
statesmen. As Eclectics they did not create new systems. Instead, they chose
(Cicero, for example) the most important concepts from the classical Creek
systems which they thought would be pragmatically useful for Roman citizens.
From a pragmatic point of view they chose what would make possible the best way
of living for a Roman citizen, as a citizen of the world state. The main ideas
which they chose, which we find again in the eighteenth-century Enlightenment,
were the following: the idea of providence, which provides a feeling of safety
to the life of the people; the idea of God as innate in everybody, which
induces fear of God and discipline; the idea of moral freedom and
responsibility, which makes it possible to educate and to hold people
accountable for moral failure; and finally the idea of immortality, which
threatens with another world those who escape punishment in this one. All these
ideas were in some way a preparation for the Christian mission.
D. THE INTER-TESTAMENTAL PERIOD
We come now to the
Hellenistic period of the Jewish religion. In Judaism during the
inter-testamental period there developed
10 A History of Christian Thought
ideas and attitudes which deeply
influenced the apostolic age, that is, Jesus, the apostles, and the writers of
the New Testament.
The
development in the idea of God during this period between the Testaments was
toward a radical transcendence. God becomes more and more transcendent, and for
this reason he becomes more and more universal. But a God who is both absolutely
transcendent and absolutely universal has lost many of the concrete traits
which the God of a nation has. For this reason names were introduced to
preserve some of the concreteness of the divinity, names like
"heaven". For example, in the New Testament we often find the term
"kingdom of heaven" in place of "kingdom of God". At the
same time, the abstraction is carried on under two influences: (1) the prohibition
against using the name of God; (2) the struggle against anthropomorphisms, that
is, seeing God in the image (morphè) of man (anthropos). Consequently
the passions of the Cod of the Old Testament disappear and the abstract oneness
is emphasized. This made it possible for the Greek philosophers, who had
introduced the same radical abstraction with respect to God, and the Jewish
universalists to unite on the idea of God. It was Philo of Alexandria, in
particular, who carried through this union.
When
God becomes abstract, however, it is not sufficient to hypostasize some of his
qualities, such as heaven, height, glory, etc. Mediating beings must appear
between God and man. During the inter-testamental period these mediating
beings became more and more important for practical piety. First, there were
the angels, deteriorated gods and goddesses from surrounding paganism. During
the period when the prophets fought against polytheism, they could not play any
role. When the danger of polytheism was completely overcome, as it was in later
Judaism, the angels could reappear without much danger of a relapse into it.
Even so, however,-the New Testament is aware of this danger and warns against
the cult of the angels.
The
second type of figure was the Messiah. The Messiah became a transcendent
being, the king of paradise. In the Book of Daniel, which is dependent on
Persian religion, the Messiah is also called the "Son of Man" who
will judge the world. In Daniel this term is probably used for Israel, but
later it became the figure of the "man from above" as described by
Paul in I Corinthians 15. Thirdly, the names of God are increased and become
The Preparation for Christianity 11
almost living figures.
The most important of these figures is the Wisdom of God, which appears already
in the Old Testament.
Wisdom created the
world, appeared in it, and then returned to heaven since it did not find a
place among men. This is very close to the idea in the Prologue of the Fourth
Gospel.
Another
of these powers between God and man is the shekinah, the dwelling
of God on earth. Another is the memra', the Word
of God, which later became so
important in the Fourth Gospel. Still another is the "Spirit of God",
which in the Old Testament means God in action. Now, however, it became a
partly independent figure between the most high God and man. The Logos became
most important for it united the Jewish memra' with the Creek
philosophical logos. Logos in Philo is the protogenës huios theou, the
first-born Son of God. These mediating beings between the most high God and man
to some extent replace the immediacy of the relationship to God. As in
Christianity, particularly in Roman Catholic Christianity, the ever more
transcendent idea of God was made acceptable to the popular mind by the
introduction of the saints into practical piety. The official doctrine remained
monotheistic; the saints were to receive only veneration, never adoration.
Between
man and God there arose also another world of beings having great power,
namely, the realm of demons. There were evil as well as good angels. These evil
angels are not only the agencies of temptation and punishment under Cod's
direction, but they are also a realm of power in opposition to God. This comes
out clearly in Jesus' conversation with the Pharisees concerning the divine or
demonic power in connection with his exorcism of demons. This belief in demons
permeated the daily life of that time and was also the subject of the highest
speculations. Although there was an element of dualism here, it never reached
the state of an ontological dualism. Here again Judaism was able to introduce a
number of ideas from Persia, including the demonology of Persian religion in
which the demons have the same status as the gods, but it never lapsed into an
ontological dualism. All the demonic powers derive their power from the one
God; they have no standing on their own in an ultimate sense. This comes out in
the mythology of the fallen angels. The evil angels as created beings are good,
but as fallen they are evil angels, and therefore they are responsible and
punishable. They
12 A History of Christian Thought
are not simply
creations of an anti-divine being. Here we have the first anti-pagan dogma.
Another influence from this period on the New Testament is the elevation
of the future into a coming aeon. In the late apocalyptic period of Jewish
history, world history was divided into two aeons, into this aeon in which we
are living (aiôn houtos) and the coming aeon which is expected (aiOn
mellon). This aeon is evaluated very pessimistically, while the coming aeon
is awaited with ecstasy. The coming aeon is not only a political idea; it goes
beyond the political hopes of the Maccabean period in which the Maccabees
defended the Jewish people against tyranny. Nor was it a statement of the
prophetic message; the prophetic message was much more historical and
this-worldly. These apocalyptic ideas were cosmological; the whole cosmos
participates in these two aeons. This aeon is controlled by demonic forces; the
world, even nature itself, is ageing and fading away. One of the reasons for
this is that man has subjected himself to the demonic forces and is disobedient
aga Inst the law. Adam's fall has produced the universal destiny of cleath.
This idea was developed from the brief story of the fall in Genesis into a
system as we find it in Paul. This fall is confiriried by every individual
through his actual sin. This aeon is under a tragic fate, but in spite of that
the individual is responsible for it.
During this inter-testamental
period the piety of the law gains in importance, in part replacing the piety of
the cult. Of course, the temple still exists but the synagogue is developed
alongside it as a religious schaol. The synagogue becomes the form in which the
decisive religious life develops. The law was not evaluated in the negative
way in which we usually do it; for the Jews it was a gift and a joy. The law
was eternal, always in God and pre-existent in the same way that later
Christian theology said that Jesus was pre-existent. The contents of the law
provided for the organization of the whole of life, down to the smallest functions.
Every moment of life was under God. This was the profound idea of the 1egilism
of the Pharisees which Jesus attacked so vigorously. For this legalism produces
an intolerable burden. There are always two possibilities in religion if an
intolerable burden is placed on thought and action; the first is the way of
compromise, which i the way of the majority. This means that the burden is
reduce d to the point that it can be endured. The
The Preparation for Christianity 16
second is the way of
despair, which was the way of people like Paul, Augustine, and Luther. In IV
Esdras we read: "We who have received the law shall be lost because of our
sins, but the law never will be lost." Here a mood is expressed
which is reflected in many Pauline sayings, a mood that permeated late Judaism
during the period between the Testaments. Many of these ideas left their
imprint on the New Testament.
E. THE MYSTERY RELIGIONS
The mystery religions
were also influential on early Christian theology. These mystery religions
should not be equated with
mysticism as such. Mysticism is
something that we find in Philo, for example. He developed a doctrine of
ecstasy, or ek-stasis, which means "standing outside oneself".
This is the highest form of piety which lies beyond faith. This mysticism
unites prophetic ecstasy with "enthusiasm", a word which comes from en-theos-mania,
meaning to possess the divine. From this there comes finally the fully
developed mystical system of the Neo-Platonists, for example, of Dionysius the
Areopagite. In this mystical system the ecstasy of the individual person leads
to a union with the One, with the Absolute, with God.
But
besides this development of mysticism we have the even more important
development of the concrete mystery gods. These mystery gods are in a sense
monotheistic, that is, the person who is initiated into a given mystery has a
concrete god who is, at the same time, the only god. However, it was possible
to be initiated into more than one mystery. This means that the figures of the
mystery gods were exchangeable. There is lacking here the exclusiveness
of Yahweh in the Old Testament.
These
mystery gods greatly influenced the Christian cult and theology. If someone is
initiated into a mystery, as later the Christians initiated their members into
the congregations by steps, he participates in the mystery god and in the
experiences of that deity. In Romans 6 Paul describes such experiences with
respect to Jesus in terms of participation in his death and resurrection. An
ecstatic experience is produced in the mystery activities. Those who
participate are brought into a state of deep sorrow over the death of the god,
and then after a time they have an ecstatic experience of the god resurrected.
The suffering
14 A History
of Christian
Thought
god is described in these
mysteries. Ever since the Delphic Apollo we have the idea of the participation
of God in the suffering of man. Apollo at Delphi had to pay for the guilt of
slaying the powers of the underworld which have their own rights. Then there
are the methods of introduction through psychological means. Intoxication is
brought about by a change of light and darkness, by ascetic fasting, by
incense, sounds, music, etc.
These
mysteries also had an esoteric character. Initiation could only follow upon a
harsh process of selection and preparation. In this way the mystery of the
performances was protected against profanation. Later in the Christian
congregations a similar thing took place in order to protect against betrayal
to the pagan persecutors.
F. THE METHOD OF THE NEW
TESTAMENT
All of the elements we
have discussed were a preparation for the rise of Christianity. The decisive
preparation, however, was the event which is documented in the New Testament.
Here we cannot present a New Testament theology, but we can show, by means of
a few examples, how the New Testament received from the surrounding religions
categories of interpretation and transformed them in the light of the reality
of Jesus as the Christ. This means that there were always two steps, reception
and transformation. The categories which had developed in the various
religions, in the Old Testament, and in the inter-testamental period, were used
to interpret the event of Jesus' appearance, but the meanings of these
categories were transformed in being applied to him.
With
respect to christology, for example, Messiah is the ancient prophetic symbol.
This symbol was applied to Jesus by the early disciples, perhaps at the very
beginning of their encounter with him. This was a great paradox. On the one
hand, it was adequate because Jesus brings the new being; on the other hand, it
was inadequate because many of the connotations of the term "Messiah"
go beyond the actual appearance of Jesus. According to the records, Jesus
himself realized the difficulty of this double judgment. Therefore, he
prohibited his disciples to use this term. Now it may be that this is a later
construction of the records;
The Preparation for Christianity 15
but however that may be,
it does mirror the double judgment that this category is both adequate and
inadequate.
The
same thing is true of the "Son of Man" concept. On the one hand, it
is adequate, and perhaps used by Jesus himself, for it points to the divine
power present in him to bring the new aeon. On the other hand, it is inadequate
because the Son of Man was supposed to appear in power and glory.
The
term "Son of David" was also used. It is adequate since he was
supposed to be the fulfiller of all the prophecies. Yet it is inadequate
because David was a king, so "Son of David" can indicate a political
leader and king. Jesus resisted this misunderstanding when he said that David
himself called the Messiah his Lord.
The
"Son of God" is an adequate term because of the special relationship
and intimate communion between Jesus and God. At the same time it is inadequate
because "Son of God" is a very familiar pagan concept. The pagan gods
propagated sons on earth. Because of this the words "only begotten"
were added and he was called "eternal". The Jews had difficulty with
this term because of its pagan connotations. They could speak of Israel as
"Son of God" but they could not apply it to an individual.
The
title "kyrios" means Lord; it is adequate because of its use in the
Old Testament where it is an expression of divine power. At the same time it is
inadequate because the mystery gods were also kyrioi, lords, and,
furthermore, Jesus was pictured concretely as a finite being. It was adequate
because the mystery gods were objects of mystical union, and so was Jesus. For
Paul especially, a person could be in Christ (en Christ5), that is, in
the power, holiness, and fear of his being.
Finally,
the concept "Logos" was adequate insofar as it expressed the
universal self-manifestation of God in all forms of reality. In Greek
philosophy and Jewish symbolism it is the cosmic principle of creation. Yet it
is inadequate because the Logos is a universal principle, whereas Jesus is a
concrete reality. His is a concrete personal life described by this term. This
is expressed in the great paradox of Christianity: the Logos became flesh. Here
we have a perfect example of how the meaning of a term, with all the
connotations it had from the past, can be transformed in expressing the
Christian message. The idea that the universal Logos became flesh could never
have been derived from the
16 A History of Christian Thought
Greek thought.
Therefore, the church fathers emphasized again and again that while the Greek
philosophers possessed the idea of the universal Logos, what was peculiarly
Christian was that the Logos became flesh in a personal life.
The
greatness of the New Testament is that it was able to use words, concepts, and
symbols which had developed in the history of religions and at the same time
preserve the picture of Jesus who was interpreted by them. The spiritual power
of the New Testament was great enough to take all these concepts into
Christianity, with all their pagan and Jewish connotations, without losing the
basic reality, namely, the event of Jesus as the Christ, which these concepts
were supposed to interpret.
