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What is the Meaning of Meaning in Paul Tillich's Theology?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 July 2018

Steven Cassedy
Steven Cassedy*
Affiliation:
University of California, San Diego
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Abstract

One of the most frequently occurring terms in Paul Tillich's theology is meaning (in his English writings) or Sinn (in his German writings). But Tillich used both in multiple senses, without acknowledging or even appearing to be aware that he was doing so. He wrote only in German till he immigrated to the United States at the age of forty-seven. He used the German Sinn abundantly in his native tongue, and with a variety of meanings: a universal medium for understanding the world; “sense,” as in “making sense” or what is missing in “senseless” (sinnlos) statements; “the unconditional” (“das Unbedingte”); a “thing pointed at” (in Tillich's theory of symbols and signs); a grand metaphysical quality of some undefined sort; the object-correlate of an act of cognition; and “God.” He drew on the German Sinn when he began to write in English but, because of the grammatical status of meaning as a verbal noun, the English term allowed Tillich to ascribe agency to things that in his view bear meaning, for example the thing that grasps us when we are in the state of faith. In addition, the English word meaning for Tillich meant “comprehensibility,” “value,” “direction,” from existential philosophy (what is missing when life is meaningless); “ultimate concern” (the “meaning which gives meaning to all meanings”); in the plural, something undefined that the human person “lives in”; and “God.” The change from German to English accompanied a change in his conception of faith, raising the possibility that the new language moved Tillich's theology in a new direction.

Type
Articles
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 111 , Issue 3 , July 2018 , pp. 307 - 332
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 2018 

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References

1 “To Be or Not to Be,” Time (16 March 1959) 46–48, 51–52.

2 John T. Elson, “Toward a Hidden God,” Time (8 April 1966) 82–87.

3 Thompson, Ian E., Being and Meaning: Paul Tillich's Theory of Meaning, Truth and Logic (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1981Google Scholar).

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8 Novalis, Schriften (ed. Richard Samuel; Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1960) 2:594, quoted in Blumenberg, Hans, Die Lesbarkeit der Welt (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1981) 256Google Scholar. All translations are mine, unless otherwise indicated.

9 Novalis, Schriften, 2:562. Cited in Der Sinn des Lebens (ed. Christoph Fehige et al.; Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 2000) 22.

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15 Tillich, Systematic Theology (3 vols.; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951–1963) 2:34–35.

16 Kierkegaard, Søren, Der Begriff der Angst (trans. Schrempf, Christoph; Jena: Diederichs, 1912) 103Google Scholar. The most recent English translation gets the Danish right (and preserves its liveliness): “This seems to suggest that for some individuals the religious is the absolute, for others not, and so ‘Goodnight!’ to all meaning in life.” Kierkegaard, Søren, The Concept of Anxiety (ed. and trans. Hannay, Alistair; New York: Liveright, 2014) 128–29Google Scholar. The Danish is in Søren Kierkegaards Skrifter (ed. Niels Jørgen Cappelørn et al.; 27 vols.; Copenhagen: Gads Forlag, 2002) 4:407–08.

17 Kierkegaard, Søren, Concluding Unscientific Postscript (trans. Swenson, David F.; Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1941) 134Google Scholar, 260. Kierkegaards Skrifter (ed. Cappelørn), 7:139, 267.

18 Tillich cites Nietzsche, Werke. Taschenausgabe (11 vols.; Leipzig: Naumann, 1906) 10:114. The passage may be found in Nietzsche Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe (ed. Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari; 40 vols.; Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1970) sect. 8, vol. 2, 128.

19 Tillich, “Existential Philosophy,” 57.

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23 Barth truncated all three statements, with slightly misleading results. Originally from EW, 6:125–27.

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25 Tillich, Paul, Das System der Wissenschaften nach Gegenständen und Methoden, in Gesammelte Werke (14 vols.; Stuttgart: Evangelisches Verlagswerk, 1959) 1:232Google Scholar. Abbreviated hereafter GW.

26 GW, 1:318 [italics in original]. An English translation of this work appears in Tillich, Paul, What Is Religion? (trans. Luther, James Adams et al.; New York: Harper & Row, 1969) 27–101Google Scholar. Adams's translation of this passage appears on p. 57.

27 Tillich, What Is Religion?, 19.

28 GW, 1:318.

29 Tillich, “Das religiöse Symbol,” in Religiöse Verwirklichung (Berlin: Furche-Verlag, 1930) 88–109, at 88.

30 Tillich, “Das religiöse Symbol,” 102.

31 The term Seinsgrund occurs immediately after Tillich's Marburg years, in the Dresden Dogmatics, in a deleted passage: “Offenbarung ist weder Eingriff in Natur und Geschichte noch Schöpfung von Natur und Geschichte, sondern Aufbrechen des Seinsgrundes in den Formen von Natur und Geshichte” (Revelation is neither intervention in nature and history nor creation from nature and history but a breaking open of the ground of being in the forms of nature and history). Paul Tillich, Dogmatik-Vorlesung (Dresden 1925–1927), in EW, 14:29 n. 1. Thanks to Russell Re Manning for pointing me to this passage.

32 Danz, “Tillich's Philosophy,” in Cambridge Companion to Paul Tillich (ed. Manning) 186.

33 Tillich, Interpretation of History, 39–41.

34 Tillich, Systematic Theology, 1:11–14 [italics in original].

35 Ibid., 1:14.

36 Ibid., 1:22.

37 Ibid., 1:50.

38 Ibid., 1:14.

39 Ibid., 1:210.

40 Ibid., 1:210.

41 Ibid., 1:189.

42 Ibid., 2:75.

43 Tillich, Paul, The Courage to Be (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1952) 56, 144Google Scholar.

44 Tillich, Courage to Be, 149; Tillich, Systematic Theology, 3:261.

45 Sartre, Jean-Paul, L’Être et le néant (Paris: Gallimard, 1943) 66Google Scholar.

46 Ibid., 76.

47 Ibid., 623.

48 Ibid., 624.

49 Tillich, Courage to Be, 46–50.

50 Ibid., 174.

51 Ibid., 174.

52 Ibid., 172.

53 Ibid., 172.

54 Ibid., 176–77.

55 Ibid., 186–88.

56 Ibid., 81–82.

57 Ibid., 91.

58 Ibid., 93.

59 GW, 1:331–32.

60 Ibid., 1:333.

61 Ibid., 1:327.

62 Tillich, Courage to Be, 173.

63 Tillich, Paul, Dynamics of Faith (New York: Harper & Row, 1957) 16Google Scholar.

64 Ibid., 78.

65 Ibid., 41–43.

66 Ibid., 45.

67 Tillich, Paul, “Theology and Symbolism,” in Religious Symbolism (ed. Johnson, F. Ernest; New York: Harper & Brothers, 1955) 109Google Scholar.

68 Ibid., 110.

69 Ibid., 110.

70 Ibid., 114.

71 Tillich, Systematic Theology, 3:111.

72 Ibid., 3:112.

73 Ibid., 3:112; Dynamics of Faith, 7.

74 Tillich, Systematic Theology, 3:115.

75 Ibid., 3:130.

76 Ibid., 3:131–32.

77 See Danz, Christian, “Textgeschichtliche Einleitung zur deutschen Übersetzung der Systematischen Theologie,” in Paul Tillich, Systematische Theologie I-II (ed. Danz, Christian; 2nd rev. ed.; Berlin: De Gruyter, 2017) 1–46Google Scholar.