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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 October 2008
Have process philosophers understood what Christian theologians are trying to say? The process critique of the broad tradition of Christian theology is motivated, at least in part, by the belief that the God of the Church's traditional confession is too unreservedly transcendent; that is, that he is insufficiently related to his creation. In response, process philosophers have defended a ‘dipolar’ concept of God according to which God is fully transcendent in his ‘primordial nature’ and fully immanent (i.e. ‘surrelative’) in his ‘consequent nature’. The dipolar construction undoubtedly solves the ‘problem’, but the question remains whether there really is a problem to be solved in the first place. Many Christian theologians, after all, have understood their faith, as well as their attempts at the rational exploration of their faith, to depend upon the divine-human relationship constituted by God's own self-disclosure. They have further understood the meaning of the terms of their theological explication to be immanent to this same experiential context of divine-human encounter, within which relationship with God is the primary reality experienced. As a particular aspect of the controversy aroused by the process critique of Christian theology, therefore, the question arises whether process philosophers have taken adequate account of the manner in which Christian theology has been conditioned by this context of divine-human encounter. I have no pretensions within the scope of this brief essay to address this question in its full generality, either with respect to the multifarious theological positions which the process critique has engendered, or with respect to the wide range of difficulties involved in any attempt to understand the relation of the Creator to his creation.
1 For a good summary of the issues involved in the assessment of process philosophy for its applicability in Christian theology, see Burrell, D. B., ‘Does Process Theology Rest on a Mistake?’, Theological Studies, XLIII, 1 (03 1982), 125–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
2 Cf. Whitehead, A. N., in Process and Reality, ed. by Griffin, D. R. and Sherburne, D. W. (Cor. ed.; New York: The Free Press, 1978), pp. 342–51;Google ScholarHartshorne, C., The Divine Relativity: A Social Conception of God (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1948), pp. 116 ff.Google Scholar
3 I am particularly anxious to avoid giving the impression that I regard the two ‘communities‘ as mutually exclusive. Several of the ablest process theoreticians, after all, are also distinguished Christian theologians: One thinks immediately of J. B. Cobb, D. R. Griffin, S. M. Ogden, D. W. D. Shaw, and the list is far from complete.Google Scholar
4 Hartshorne, C., Creative Synthesis and Philosophic Method (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1983), pp. 148–51.Google Scholar Hartshorne's views are more fully stated, though with no substantial difference in his conclusions, in his earlier essay, ‘Tillich's doctrine of God’, in The Theology of Paul Tillich, ed. by Kegley, C. W. and Bretall, R. W. (New York: Macmillan, 1952), pp. 164–95.Google Scholar
5 The standard work on Tillich's method, its background, and the vast secondary literature on the subject is now Clayton, J. P., The Concept of Correlation: Paul Tillich and the Possibility of a Mediating Theology (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1980). Though Professor Clayton's ‘principal object of interest’ is Tillich's use of correlation as an approach to ‘the problem of the relationship between Christianity and culture’ (p. 82), and though I have minor disagreements with his treatment, I have found particularly helpful his fifth chapter, on ‘Questioning, answering and the concept of correlation’ (pp. 155–190).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
6 Tillich, P., Systematic Theology, 3 vols. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1951–63). References to this work will be given parenthetically in the text of the essay and will refer to Volume I unless otherwise specified.Google Scholar
7 Cf., e.g. Hamilton, K., The System and the Gospel: A Critique of Paul Tillich (London: SCM Press, 1963), pp. 116 ff.Google Scholar
8 On this point, cf. esp. Ristiniemi, J., Existential Dialectics: An Inquiry into the Epistemological Status and the Methodological Role of the Experiential Core in Paul Tillich's Systematic Thought (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1987), pp. 28 ff.Google Scholar
9 Tillich's insistence on the pre-theoretical reality of correlation is especially clear in his essay on ‘The Problem of Theological Method’ (Journal of Religion, XXVII (1947), 16–27), where he notes that ‘the method must follow’ the ‘demands’ made by reality (p. 16); and that the ‘prius’ of all methodical analysis is ‘encounter’, by which he means ‘our pre-theoretical relation to reality’ (p. 17). Cf., esp., p. 25: ‘Question and answer must be correlated in such a way that the religious symbol is interpreted as the adequate answer to a question, implied in man's existence, and asked in primitive, pre-philosophical, or elaborated philosophical terms.’ Cf. also, Systematic Theology, n, p. 13: ‘The question, asked by man, is man himself. He asks it, whether or not he is vocal about it. He cannot avoid asking, because his very being is the question of his existence.’Google Scholar
10 Cf. Tillich, , Dynamics of Faith (New York: Harper and Row, 1957), p. 9: ‘Man is driven toward faith by his awareness of the infinite to which he belongs, but which he does not own like a possession. This is in abstract terms what concretely appears as the ‘restlessness of the heart1 within the flux of life.’ The locus dassicus for this existential tension is Augustine, Confessions, 1.1: ‘You excite us, so that it delights us to praise you, since you made us for yourself and our heart is restless until it rests in you.’Google Scholar
11 I am primarily concerned with Tillich's theological uses of the term ‘being-itself,’ but it should be noted that the context of ultimate concern conditions its meaning even as a term of ontology. On this point, see Winquist, C. E., ‘Heterology and ontology in the thought of Paul Tillich’, in God and Being: The Problem of Ontology in the Philosophical Theology of Paul Tillich ed. by Hummell, G. (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1989), pp. 56–58;Google Scholar and esp. Thatcher, A., The Ontology of Paul Tillich (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), pp. 12–13: ‘Plainly the ontological search is not the same as the rational inquiry into being. In the ontological search the seeker after wisdom already assumes the distinction between ultimate reality and mere appearance. He is, we might say, “ultimately concerned ” … The rationalistic account of ontology proceeds by way of philosophical detachment: the search for the ontological ultimate proceeds by way of the existential involvement of the inquirer.’ Basic to Tillich's ontology, like Heidegger's, is the ‘ontological question’, which he describes as ‘the question of being-itself, [which] arises in something like a “metaphysical shock” - the shock of possible nonbeing’ (Systematic Theology, 1, 163). The ‘ontological question’, in turn, as Thatcher explains (op. cit., p. 24), ‘guarantees that [Tillich] is not merely engaged in the earlier type of rationalistic ontology, or in the creation of another system of idealism. It raises the issue of non-being in its acute existential form. The existential basis which the ontological question guarantees is itself sufficient to turn ontology into what Tillich calls theology, viz. that a subject (i) “concerns us ultimately ” and (ii) “determines our being or non-being” ([Systematic Theology, 1, 12, 14]).’Google Scholar
12 On the crucial importance of experiential context in Tillich's theology, see Grigg, R., ‘The Experiential Center of Tillich's System’, Journal of the American Academy of Religion, XLIII, 4 (06, 1985), 251–58; and esp. Ristiniemi, pp. 38–49, 124–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
13 Tillich invariably contrasts his own theological procedure with that of‘theism’. (Cf. Systematic Theology, 1, 223, 245, 262; 11, 12, 25; and esp. The Courage to Be (London: Nisbet & Co., 1952, pp. 172–6.) Despite important differences in other respects (e.g. with regard to the character of ‘religious experience’), Tillich is substantially in agreement with the rejection of ‘theism’ in N. Lash, Easter in Ordinary: Reflections on Human Experience and the Knowledge of God (London: SCM Press, 1988); cf. esp. pp. 103–4, 264. On the value of Tillich's thought ‘in developing a post-theistic religious philosophy’, see Grigg, p. 257.Google Scholar
14 Hartshorne's adjective, ‘pragmatic’, may be motivated by the now generally accepted view of Pragmatism as the American equivalent of continental phenomenology (cf. Smith, J. E., Purpose and Thought: The Meaning of Pragmatism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978), pp. 9–10, 124–27, 164), although he makes no effort to exploit such a connection.Google Scholar
15 The same result is achieved in Hartshorne, ‘Tillich's Doctrine of God’, p. 167.Google Scholar
16 Ibid. p. 166.
17 ‘The Lord our God, the Lord is one; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength’ (RSV).Google Scholar
18 See the translator's note in Tillich, , The Protestant Era, trans, and ed. by Adams, J. L. (London; Nisbet & Co., 1951), p. 37, n. 1: ‘The term “unconditional” which is often used in this book points to that element in every religious experience which makes it religious. In every symbol of the divine an unconditional claim is expressed, most powerfully in the command: “Thou shall love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.” No partial, restricted, conditioned love of God is admitted.’Google Scholar
19 The Markan quotation is particularly significant when we realize how rarely Tillich indulges in scriptural citation and, indeed, how vigorously he has been criticized (cf. the numerous references in Hamilton) for his very broad departure from biblical language.Google Scholar
20 See again, J. L. Adams, in Tillich, op. cit., p. 37, n. 1: ‘The unconditional is a quality, not a being. It characterises that which is our ultimate and, consequently, unconditional concern, whether we call it “God” or “ Being as such” or the “Good as such” or the “True as such”, or whether we give it any other name. It would be a complete mistake to understand the unconditional as a being the existence of which can be discussed. He who speaks of the “existence of the unconditional” has thoroughly misunderstood the meaning of the term.’Google Scholar
21 Tillich, however, is not wholly consistent on this point. Cf. e.g. Systematic Theology, 11, 9: ‘There is a point at which a non-symbolic assertion about God must be made, namely, the statement that everything we say about God is symbolic’ Cf. also, p. 10: ‘If we say that God is the infinite, or the unconditional, or being-itself, we speak rationally and ecstatically at the same time. These terms precisely designate the boundary line at which both the symbolic and the non-symbolic coincide.’Google Scholar
22 Tillich‘s discussion is largely consistent with standard phenomenological accounts of religious symbolism. (Cf. e.g. Schutz, A., ‘Symbol, Reality, and Society’, in Collected Papers, vol. 1: The Problem of Social Reality, ed. by Natanson, M. (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1962), esp. pp. 331 f.) The fact remains, however, that the linguistic status of the phrase ‘being-itself’ in Tillich's usage is ambiguous. On this point, cf. Thatcher, op. cit., esp. pp. 33 ff, where he concludes that ‘being-itself’ is both a symbol and a concept. It will be sufficient here to note that (1) the necessity of the experiential context of ‘correlation’ for the proper interpretation of ‘being-itself’ is unaltered by the confusion surrounding its linguistic character; and that (2) the question whether ‘being-itself’ is more properly regarded as a symbol than as a concept is irrelevant to my discussion of Hartshorne's critique. Hartshorne's argument, after all, is that Tillich's list of possible ‘literal’ statements about God is already too small, not too large.Google Scholar
23 A sandard work on Tillich's understanding of religious symbols is Rowe, W. L., Religious Symbols and God: A Philosophical Study of Tillich's Theology (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1968). Rowe's treatment, unfortunately, suffers from the same defect as Hartshorne's: he has dropped the context of ‘the correlation of revelation’, which is why he finds it a ‘major problem … to understand what it means or could mean to say of [a symbol] that it participates in the meaning, power, or reality of that to which it points’ (p. 112). For a much more adequate treatment of this problemGoogle Scholarsee Thompson, I. E., Being and Meaning: Paul Tillich's Theory of Meaning, Truth and Logic (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1981), esp. pp. 98 ff.Google Scholar
24 As part of Hartshorne's‘summary of Tillich's statements about God’ (op cit., p. 164), he says:‘Apart from reference to our religious life, we can only say that deity is “being-itself”, or the “power of being whereby it resists non-being”. (Even this we can understand only because of an element of “ecstatic” or implicitly religious experience in all of us.)’ Besides repeating that the revelatory manifestation of God as ‘being-itself’ is never ‘apart from reference to our religious life’, it must be asked how an experience which fits Tillich's description of‘ecstasy’ can be ‘implicitly religious.’ It should also be noted that this, Hartshorne's only reference to experiential context in Tillich, is a parenthesis.Google Scholar
25 Very prominent in the background (cf. Systematic Theology, 1, 42) is Schleiermacher, F. D. E., The Christian Faith, ed. by Mackintosh, H. R. and Stewart, J. S. (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1928), section 4 pp. 12–18, where the feeling of‘absolute dependence’ is distinguished precisely by the lack of ‘Reciprocity [of freedom and dependence] between the subject and the corresponding Other’ (p. 14), and where this remains true ‘not only when we particularize this Other … but also when we think of the total “outside” as one, and moreover (since it contains other receptivities and activities to which we have a [reciprocal] relation) as one together with ourselves, that is, as a World’ (pp. 14–15).Google Scholar
26 In his reply to the criticisms Hartshorne voices in ‘Tillich's Doctrine of God’, Tillich attempts to draw Hartshorne's attention to the neglected context of correlation. Cf. Tillich, ‘Reply to interpretation and criticism’, in Kegley and Bretall, p. 331: ‘For many years I have avoided the term “absolute” with reference to God. “ Unconditional” means that the realm ofjinitude is transcended, “ absolute ” excludes finitude from a static infinite, a position which I, like Mr. Hartshorne, reject’ (emphasis added). Once again, however, it should be noted that Tillich is not completely consistent; cf. e.g. Systematic Theology, 1, 239: ‘God is being-itself, or the absolute’.Google Scholar
27 Similarly, cf. Schleiermacher, where, in the proposition of section 4, ‘ the consciousness of being absolutely dependent’ is identified with the state of ‘being in relation with God’ (p. 12). Cf. esp., pp. 16–17: ‘ [This identification] is to be understood in the sense that the Whence of our receptive and active existence, as implied in this self-consciousness, is to be designated by the word “God” and that this is for us the really original signification of that word … [We] have to note that our proposition is intended to oppose the view that this feeling of dependence is itself conditioned by some previous knowledge of God … So that in the first instance God signifies for us simply that which is the co-determinant in this feeling and to which we trace our being in such a state; and any further content of the idea must be evolved out of this fundamental import assigned to it. Now this is just what is principally meant by the formula which says that to feel oneself absolutely dependent and to be conscious of being in relation with God are one and the same thing; …’Google Scholar
28 Cf. Tillich, ‘The problem of theological method’, p. 22: ‘Revelation is the manifestation of the ultimate ground and meaning of human existence (and implicitly of all existence). It is not a matter of objective knowledge, of empirical research or rational inference. It is a matter of ultimate concern; it grasps the total personality and is effective through a set of symbols’ (emphasis added). For a similar conclusion, see again, Grigg, p. 257: ‘When a symbol carries out this task [i.e. the task of representing being-itself], it can become a source [or, as I would prefer to say, an event] of empowerment, making beingitself present to consciousness as the negation of the negation of being’ (emphasis added).Google Scholar
29 Baillie, J., Our Knowledge of God (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1939), p. 17.Google Scholar
30 Burrell, p. 134.Google Scholar
31 Cf. Devenish, P. E., ‘Postliberal Process Theology: A Rejoinder to Burrell’, Theological Studies XLIII, 3 (Sept. 1982), 504–13.Google Scholar In his seminal essay on ‘The Reality of God’ (in Ogden, S. M., The Reality of God and Other Essays (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1977), esp. pp. 37 ff), Professor Ogden shows himself to be, among other things, an accomplished religious phenomenologist.Google Scholar
