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Tillich and Heidegger: A Structural Relationship

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 June 2011

Thomas F. O'Meara O.P.
Thomas F. O'Meara O.P.
Affiliation:
Aquinas Institute School or Theology, Association of Theological Faculties in Iowa
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Extract

The evaluation of Tillich's theological system in America and Great Britain (incipient in Germany but almost nonexistent in France) inevitably takes a stand on two questions. It asks whether Tillich is a theologian or a philosopher, and it asks whether he is an existentialist, an idealist, or, perhaps, both. The second question has almost as many opinions as answers. Is Tillich solely or basically a product of the German nineteenth century? Is he an existentialist despite his system, or an idealist despite his demand for existential theology? Or is Tillich merely an existentialist in his general terminology, while the horizon and form of his thought (because of ontology and system) is of the nineteenth century?

Type
Research Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 61 , Issue 2 , April 1968 , pp. 249 - 261
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1968

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References

1 Tillich, Paul, Ultimate Concern (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), 37Google Scholar.

2 Tillich, Autobiographical Reflections, The Theology of Paul Tillich, Kegley, C. W., Brettal, R. W., eds. (New York: Macmillan, 1952), 11Google Scholar.

3 Tillich, , The Interpretation of History (New York: Scribner's, 1936), 60Google Scholar.

4 Ibid., 35.

5 Autobiographical Reflections, art. cit., 11.

6 Ibid., 14.

7 Tillich, Vorwort, Frühe Hauptwerke, Gesammelte Werke (Stuttgart: Evangelisches Verlagswerk, 1959)Google Scholar, I, 9; see Existential Philosophy: Its Historical Meaning, Theology of Culture (New York: Galaxy, 1964), 77–79Google Scholar.

8 Tillich's thesis for the doctorate in philosophy was: Die religionsgeschichtliche Konstruktion in Schellings positiver Philosophie, ihre Voraussetzungen und Prinzipien (Breslau: Fleischmann, 1910)Google Scholar; for the licentiate in theology: Mystik und Schuldbewusstsein in Schellings philosophischer Entwicklung (Gütersloh: Bertelsmann, 1912)Google Scholar; the licentiate thesis is reprinted in Frühe Hauptwerke, ed. cit., 11–108.

9 Tillich, Religions philosophie, Lehrbuch der Philosophie, Dessoir, M., ed. (Berlin: Ullstein, 1925)Google Scholar, II, 765–835, reprinted in Frühe Hauptwerke, ed. cit., 295–366.

10 Tillich, , Systematic Theology (Chicago: University Press, 1957)Google Scholar, II, 19–28; cited as ST II.

11 Autobiographical Reflections, art. cit., 14.

12 Tillich, Existential Philosophy…, art. cit., 77. “The third and contemporary form of Existential philosophy has resulted from a combination of this Philosophy of Life with Husserl's shift of emphasis from existent objects to the mind that makes them its objects, and with the rediscovery of Kierkegaard and of the early developments of Marx. Heidegger, Jaspers, and the Existential interpretation of history found in German Religious Socialism are the main representatives of the third period of this philosophy of experienced Existence.” Ibid., 79.

13 Tillich, The Interpretation of History, ed. cit., 39–40.

14 Ibid.

15 Tillich, , Systematic Theology (Chicago: University Press, 1951)Google Scholar, I, 208 (cited as ST I); ST II, 11. A year after the appearance of Sein und Zeit Tillich made the remark: “Heidegger's ontology, the greatness of which depends on the fact that it undertakes to create a rational myth of being, indicates how correct this conception of metaphysics is.” Das religiöse Symbol, Blätter für deutsche Philosophic 1 (1928), 277–91; a translation appears in Journal of Liberal Religion 2 (1950), 13–33.

16 ST I, 8ff., 22ff., 210; see Tillich, Theology and Religious Symbolism, Religious Symbols, Johnson, F. E., ed. (New York: Harper & Bros., 1955), 108Google Scholar.

17 Tillich says the ontological question may not determine the answer, revelation; the question is precontained in the answer; ST II, 14–18. “Faith includes the ontological question whether the question is asked explicitly or not.” Biblical Religion and the Search for Ultimate Reality (Chicago: University Press, 1955), 59Google Scholar.

18 ST I, 66, 59.

19 ST I, 62.

20 Ibid. How Tillich is related to and employs phenomenology is another question. Tillich offers a phenomenology of God, but his method and epistemological views do not seem to allow a quick identification of Tillich's phenomenology with that of Husserl.

21 “Anxiety about meaninglessness is the characteristically human form of ontological anxiety…. the threat against the finite structure of being.” ST I, 210.

22 ST I, 189, 190, 191; Tillich writes: “Anxiety is independent of any special object which might produce it; it is dependent only on the threat of non-being — which is identical with finitude. In this sense it has been said rightly that the object of anxiety is ‘nothingness’—and nothingness is not an ‘object.’ ” ST I, 191. Heidegger had prepared this analysis: “Angst is always Angst about… but not before this or that…. Angst reveals nothingness.” Was ist Metaphysik? (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1960), 32Google Scholar. All translations of Heidegger are by the author.

23 Heidegger, Martin, Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1951), 206Google Scholar; in Heidegger's interpretation human finitude is the point of Kant's thought; ibid., 196, 198ff. Heidegger says that Dasein is also in its existence ec-static (Was ist Metaphysik, ed. cit., 15), and in this dynamic and transcendent. But this is neither a divinization of being nor an implication of God's entrance. It is simply a further description of the open relationship of Dasein to Being, unique among existents. Karl Rahner, S.J., develops this, among other insights of Heidegger, in his fundamental theological analysis of man as open to God, man as Geist in freedom and knowing; Hörer des Wortes (Munich: Kösel, 1963), 2 ed. Rahner is another example of a theologian employing basic approaches of Heidegger; he studied philosophy in Freiburg from 1934 to 1936.

24 Tillich, Existential Philosophy…, art. cit., 102f.; Tillich cites Sein und Zeit (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1963), 284Google Scholar (all of the following citations are from the tenth edition), that guilt does not follow from an act but presupposes a state of guilt. One should be slow to identify Heidegger's analysis of man's de facto situation with a union of a theological Fall with ontological existence; on this subject see Hollenback, J. M., Sein und Gewissen (Baden-Baden: Grimm, 1954)Google Scholar; Engelhardt, P. O.P., Eine Begegnung zwischen Martin Heidegger und thomistischer Philosophic?, Freiburger Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Theologie 3 (1936), 187–96Google Scholar.

25 Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, ed. cit., 5, 6.

26 Ibid., 7, 14.

27 Heidegger, “Vorwort,” to Richardson, William S.J., Heidegger: Through Phenomenology to Thought (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1963)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, xviii.

28 Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, ed. cit., 34–40. “The broad lines of Heidegger's problematic are now clear (after the first part, the Introduction)…. Fundamental ontology, itself only a preliminary analysis to expose the horizon necessary for the analysis of the sense of Being itself, will prepare to interrogate the Being that is comprehended by first interrogating the comprehending itself. The prelude to the question of Being is the question of There-being (Dasein).” Richardson, op. cit., 40.

29 ST I, 168f.; Tillich always emphasizes that man is not more easily accessible as an object of knowledge than other objects or more certain of his inner thoughts than external realities, but that man is where awareness encounters Being.

30 Tillich's “metaphysical shock” — the possibility of non-being in light of the fact of being — gives rise to the question of ultimates in theology, the question of Being-Itself. Tillich says the question has been expressed in the form: “Why is there something; why not nothing?” ST I, 163f. Heidegger states the basic question of metaphysics as: “Why is there beings, and why not, much more nothing? That is the question.” Einführung in die Metaphysik (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1958), 1. Tillich objects to this form with its final emphasis on nothing; the ultimate question must begin and stay with being. In Heidegger's Nachwort to the above work there is a transference of Nichts to Sein, and the work ends with a puzzling over the mystery — that there are beings. Ibid., 46f.

31 ST I, 164.

32 Heidegger, Was ist die Metaphysik, ed. cit., 21.

33 Müller, Max, Existenz-Philosophie im geistigen Leben der Gegenwart (Heidelberg: Kerle, 1964), 94 ffGoogle Scholar.

34 ST I, 235–37.

35 Ibid., 235–38. This seems to be the meaning of Being-Itself as explained by the Ground of Being and the Power of Being — that Being-Itself is not open to the multiple threat endangering finite beings. In the German version of ST I (which is more than a translation), the term Ground of Being is translated Grund des Seins and not Grund aller Seienden. Tillich sees Being as within the created structure.

36 Tillich, The Interpretation of History, ed. cit., 40.

37 Heidegger, , Über den Humanismus (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1947), 76Google Scholar. On the mistaken interpretation of Heidegger's Sein as God in the past decades see Max Müller, op. cit., 65ff.

38 Tillich, Ultimate Concern, ed. cit., 51; Tillich writes that many forms of theology bring “God's existence down to the level of a stone or a star, and… make atheism not only possible, but almost unavoidable.” The Two Types of Philosophy of Religion, Theology of Culture, ed. cit., 18.

39 “He who has experienced theology — whether that of the Christian faith or that of philosophy — from the point of view of its origin and development prefers today in the area of thinking about God to keep quiet.” Heidegger, Die ontotheo-logische Verfassung der Metaphysik, in Identität und Differenz (Pfullingen: Neske, 1937), 51Google Scholar.

40 Ibid., 70f.; see Nietzsche's Wort ‘Gott ist tot’, Holzwege (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1950), 235–39Google Scholar.

41 Heidegger, , Vom Wesen des Grundes (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1929), 39Google Scholar.

42 ST I, 216; see 215–17, 14.

43 Heidegger, Über den Humanismus, ed. cit., 36f.

44 Heidegger, Heimkunft/ An die Verwandten, Erläuterungen zu Hölderlins Dichtung (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1951), 27Google Scholar.

45 “Given the existence of a creature as the effect of God, it is necessary that there be God the creator…. the way of effect to cause is found indifferently in every caused being.” In I Sent., d. 3, a. 1, ad 10.

46 Tillich accepts the Kantian critique of causality as necessarily finite; ST I, 208–10, 237f. He favors the Augustinian-Neo-Platonic approach to God over that of Aquinas in The Two Types of the Philosophy of Religion, art. cit. Tillich writes, “I believe that the Platonic (Augustinian-Franciscan) tradition is more fundamental for the understanding of our knowledge of God.” Appreciation and Reply, in Paul Tillich in Catholic Thought (Chicago: The Priory Press, 1964), 307Google Scholar. Hence the accuracy of J. Heywood Thomas' description of Tillich in brief as in the Augustinian tradition yet owing much to Schelling and Heidegger; Paul Tillich: An Appraisal (London: SCM, 1964), 174Google Scholar.

47 Ott, Heinrich, Geschichte und Heilsgeschichte in der Theologie Rudolf Bultmanns (Tübingen: Mohr, 1955), 202Google Scholar; this insight was developed, in dialogue with Barth, in Denken und Sein. Der Weg Martin Heideggers und der Weg der Theologie (Zürich: EVZ-Verlag, 1959)Google Scholar.

48 The Later Heidegger and Theology, Robinson, James M., Cobb, John B., eds. (New York: Harper and Row, 1963)Google Scholar.