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The Appropriation of Dynamics and Form for Tillich's God

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 June 2011

Lewis S. Ford
Lewis S. Ford
Affiliation:
Old Dominion University, Norfolk, VA 23508
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Extract

In the official formulation of Tillich's theology, the ontological polarity of dynamics and form, together with the other polarities, provides the basic symbolic material for the description of the divine life. In that life dynamics and form are balanced, with the tensions and disruptions characteristic of finite life wholly overcome. “Being comprises becoming and rest, becoming as an implication of dynamics and rest as an implication of form. If we say that God is being-itself, this includes both rest and becoming, both the static and the dynamic elements” (ST I 247). At the same time, however, we find that Tillich identifies God or being-itself with the power of being (ST I 110, 180, 2O5f., 230, 236f., 272; ST II 10f.). Although he does not and perhaps would not identify dynamics with the power of being, we find that they have extremely similar characteristics. In fact we are driven to ask why the element of dynamics within the divine life is not identified with the power of being, and to speculate on the consequences of such an identification. It is our contention that the internal logic of Tillich's analysis of this polarity is such that he cannot finally avoid identifying divine dynamics with the creative power of being. This, in turn, entails that God is a being rather than beyond being, himself an instance of the power of being pervasively inherent in all beings. In the first section we shall consider the polarity of dynamics and form as it functions in finite beings. Then we shall examine its role in the divine life and its relationship to the power of being.

Type
Research Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 68 , Issue 1 , January 1975 , pp. 35 - 51
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1975

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References

1 ST I, II, and III refer to the three volumes of Paul Tillich's Systematic Theology (Chicago: University Press, 1951, 1957, 1963).Google Scholar

2 Tillich has recognized his indebtedness to Schelling on several occasions, most specifically in ‘Schelling und die Anfänge des existentialistischen Protestes,” Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung 9 (1955) 197–208.Google Scholar This influence has been documented in two studies: Daniel J. O'Hanlon S. J., The Influence of Schelling on the Thought of Paul Tillich, Excerpta ex dissertatione ad Laurem in Facultate Theologica Pontificiae Universitatis Gregorianae (Rome, 1958)Google Scholar; and Sommer, Günter Friedrich, “The Significance of the Late Philosophy of Schelling for the Formation and Interpretation of the Thought of Paul Tillich,” unpubl. Ph.D. diss. (Duke, 1960).Google Scholar Father O'Hanlon's study is handicapped by his exclusive reliance on secondary sources for his study of Schelling. Sommer has examined the primary sources with some care, especially the Freiheitslehre and the later Philosophie der Mythologie und Offenbarung. In chapter four of Tillich: A Theological Portrait (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1968)Google Scholar, David H. Hopper has summarized the basic argument of Tillich's second doctoral dissertation on Schelling, “Mystik und Schuldbewusstsein in Schellings philosophischer Entwicklung” (1912), to show the underlying ontology governing Tillich's work throughout his career. This dissertation is now available as Mysticism and Guilt-Consciousness in Schelling's Philosophical Development, translated with Introduction and notes by Victor Nuovo (Lewisburg, Pa.: Bucknell University Press, 1974).

3 The Ages of the World (edited and translated by Frederic de Wolfe Bolman; New York: Columbia University Press, 1942).Google ScholarDie Weltalter was Schelling's most ambitious project, though it ended in failure. After some seventeen tries between 1810 and 1821, he finally abandoned the project. Three fragmentary versions have been published: the 1814 version in Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling's Sämmtliche Werke, Band 8 (Stuttgart und Augsburg: J. G. Cotta, 1856), and the 1811 and 1813 versions in Die Weltalter, Fragmente (edited by Schröter, Manfred; M¨nchen: Biederstein Verlag, 1946).Google Scholar In its conception Die Weltalter was Schelling's counterpart to Hegel's Encyclopedia; his three Ages, the Past, the Present, and the Future, roughly correspond to the three divisions of the Encyclopedia: Logic, Nature, and Spirit. Schelling was unable to resolve the problems raised in his section on the Past, and barely touched on the other two sections. Schelling's difficulties, we feel, arise primarily from the very different conception of dialectic which he held from that of Hegel.

4 See Sydney and Beatrice Rome, eds., Philosophical Interrogations (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1964) 358.Google Scholar

5 Ibid., 358f.

6 For Tillich's estimate of the impotence of pure ideas, see the Interpretation of History (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1939) 190f.Google Scholar

7 For oblique references to form as constituting the power of being see ST I 101, 203, and indirectly, ST II 10f.

8 The Interpretation of History, 182.

9 Gerardus van der Leeuw, Religion in Essence and Manifestation (translated by Turner, J. E.; London: G. Allen and Unwin, 1938).Google Scholar

10 As found in ST I 249–52. Tillich's further discussion of the Trinity is given in ST III 283–94.

11 See Richardson, Cyril C., The Doctrine of the Trinity (New York: Abingdon Press, 1958).Google Scholar

12 See my essay on “Tillich's Tergiversations Toward the Power of Being,” Scottish Journal of Theology 28/4 (1975) 1–18.Google Scholar

13 The ground of being signifies dynamics at ST I 250, where the first trinitarian principle is described as “the inexhaustible ground of being in which everything has its origin.” Cf. ST I 116, 251. More frequently it signifies being-itself, as at ST I 235: “Many confusions … could be avoided if God were understood first of all as being itself or as the ground of being.” So also ST I 79, 140, 147, 156f., 157f., 204f., 207, 280; ST II 10, 87, 161, 167.

14 The abyss, Tillich's term for the source of being seen as the chaos which precedes form and meaning, signifies dynamics at ST I 156: “The divine life is the dynamic unity of depth and form. In mystical language the depth of the divine life, its inexhaustible and ineffable character, is called ‘Abyss’. In philosophical language the form … is called ‘Logos.’” Cf. ST I 119, 159, 205, 279. It signifies being itself, on the other hand, at ST I 61: “But although God in his abysmal nature [Calvin: ‘In his essence’] is in no way dependent on man, God in his self-manifestation to man is dependent on the way man receives his manifestation.” So also ST I 110, 140, 157f., 174, 213.

15 Depth usually signifies being-itself understood as the ultimate substratum which may be uncovered by penetrating through the proximate being it supports: ST I 61, 79, 101, 117, 140f., 180. Occasionally, however, it signifies dynamics. ST I 156 speaks of the divine life as “the dynamic unity of depth and form” and ST I 250 describes the first trinitarian principle as the “divine depth.”

16 Mystery discloses being-itself as the hidden, underlying source of God's self-manifestation in revelation. “The mystery which is revealed is of ultimate concern to us because it is the ground of our being” (ST I 110; cf. also 108). But sometimes the mystery is contrasted with the logos as an element within being-itself: “It is the abysmal character of the divine life which makes revelation mysterious; it is the logical character of the divine life which makes the revelation of the mystery possible …” (ST I 156; cf. also 119).

17 ST I 110, 189 (?), 230, 231, 235f., 237, 272, 283; ST II 11, 12.

18 Tillich does not examine the question whether real possibility is definite or indefinite, so this argument is valid only in this hypothetical form.

19 Thus Plato's Form of the Good, though ultimate, could not be identified with God. Even in Plato there is a struggle concerning the ultimacy of form. The relationship between the souls and the forms is never fully resolved, and the Form of the Good is not really a form. Cf. Lovejoy, Arthur O., The Great Chain of Being (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1936).Google Scholar