Did Jesus Blow It or did the Atheist?

 



Atheists often use the so called "Olivette discourse" As what they must think is a certain proof that Jesus screwed and predicted the end of the world wrongly. The issue is found in all three synoptic Gospels but in Mark it's found in chapter 13: 1=3

1As he was leaving the temple, one of his disciples said to him, "Look, Teacher! What massive stones! What magnificent buildings!"

2"Do you see all these great buildings?" replied Jesus. "Not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down."

3As Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter, James, John and Andrew asked him privately, 4"Tell us, when will these things happen? And what will be the sign that they are all about to be fulfilled?"

Jesus seems to say "this generation will not pass away before this comes to pass," by "this" is included angels coming in glory and the end of the world. So it appears that Jesus got it wrong. There is an answer that I came up with. It's not the only answer, there are others. The Preterits answer for example (which most Christians find untenable). I like my answer best. I came up with it way back around 2002-4 or something and I've used it a lot. It's based upon textual criticism.

My answer says there is an older version than we have in the canonical Gospels. The pre-Mark redaction was circulating in writing as early as AD50 and this is agreed upon by a majority of Scholars* today. Certainly three of the major one's, Koester, Crosson, and Brown all agreed in principle even though they all  have different senerioes as to what that original writing was like. So I assume that in the original there were two separate questions.

(1) What will be the sing of Messiah' coming

(2) when the temple be destroyed.

To one Jesus says "this generation will not pass away," to the other he says "you will see the son of man return in the clouds with the angels" to the other. So he has two questions and two answers. It only makes him a fool if he gave as an answer to "when is the end of the world? (messiah returning) as "this generation will not pass away" and when will the temple be destroyed as "when you see the angles coming." If he got it the other way, when is the temple destroyed, before this generation passes away, when is the end? "when you see the angels coming," then he's a prophet. The fact that that's the right is just obvious since the end of world did not accompany the fall of the temple but some of Jesus' generation did live to see it. So that seems to be what did happen and that's that's a good reason to think that's the way the questions and their answers really stack up.

But we can see that Mark reduced or collapsed the two questions into one and Matt preserved them as two with their two answers. but the answers were cross threaded. Let's see how it's worded:


Mark 13:

 ¹As he was leaving the temple, one of his disciples said to him, "Look, Teacher! What massive stones! What magnificent buildings!"  ²"Do you see all these great buildings?" replied Jesus. "Not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down."
 ³As Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter, James, John and Andrew asked him privately, ⁴"Tell us, when will these things happen? And what will be the sign that they are all about to be fulfilled?"

there we see the collapse into one question. Why? Because this is the question:

v4 (a) when will these things happen?

(b) what will be the sign that they are all about to be fulfilled?"

this is the same question. It's just saying "when will this happen" and when will it be fulfilled? that's the same thing. What things' (Notice plural two things what are they?) he's been talking about destruction of the temple. what was said in vs 2:

²"Do you see all these great buildings?" replied Jesus. "Not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down."

that's just one thing, the stones will not be left, (they are at the temple so they are talking about the destruction of the temple) they get to the mt of Olives and suddenly it's "things" not just one but two. where did they get two things to ask about? Obviously there are two questions in the original version and Mark has collapsed them into one. They began with the temple and suddenly they have the return of Messiah in it and the the end of the world and they are talking about more than one thing. where did they get that? How do I know they are discussing the end? Because the rest of the chapter, Jesus' answer to this question is about the end times, it concludes in verse 25 with this:

²⁴"But in those days, following that distress,
   " 'the sun will be darkened,
      and the moon will not give its light;
 ²⁵the stars will fall from the sky,
      and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.'^[d] 26"At that time men will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory. ²⁷And he will send his angels and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of the heavens.

So somehow they go from destruction of the temple to the end of the world and form one question to discussion "things" including the return of the Messiah. Why do that? Why collapse two questions in to one and why one questions bout the end times? Because they Jews believed then and they do now that the Messiah will return at the end when the temple is destroyed. They would not conceive of their faith with out the temple so the end of the temple had to mean the end of the world. So why bother to preserve two questions which are unrelated when you assume they are about the same thing? Of cousre Jesus answer is not reflective of his real words, but may contain the elements of his answers but crosses the answers to the wrong questions because they assume it's one question, about one event with one answer: when the temple is destroyed you will see the angels coming in the clouds with the son of man. one event.

Now Mat just happens to preserve the original two questions, but the redactor while not collapsing the questions cross threads the answers. So the answer to "when will the temple be destroyed" becomes "when the angles come down" and the answer to "when will the end come?" becomes "this generation will not pass away. It should be the other way around. Since the redactor didn't understand that the questions are preserved as separate becuase they are two separate events, he just preserved them by accident and when on assuming that' they about one event.

Let's look at how Mat preserves the questions:

Mat 24:1-3

¹Jesus left the temple and was walking away when his disciples came up to him to call his attention to its buildings. ²"Do you see all these things?" he asked. "I tell you the truth, not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down."  ³As Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately. "Tell us," they said, "when will this happen, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?"

This is not just one question repeated two different ways as Mark has it. These are two seperate questions, even though the redactors probably never realized it. They are (1) when will this (destorcution of temple) happen? and (2) what is the sign of your comming? But since they understood those two things as one event Mark conflated them. Mat on preserves the distinction by accient. why? because the answer Jesus gives in Mat reflect the notion of one event:

 ⁴Jesus answered: "Watch out that no one deceives you. ⁵For many will come in my name, claiming, 'I am the Christ,^[a]' and will deceive many. ⁶You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. ⁷Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. ⁸All these are the beginning of birth pains.

He goes on for the rest of the chapter talking about the end times. So clearly the redactor the two events as one even though it seems there must have been two seperate qeustions in the begining. Now one might ask do I know it wasn't the other way around? Mat might break them into two when they were one to begin with. But while its' obvious what the motive would be for conflating them but there seems to be no motive I can think of for doing it the other way. This is especially true the the answer Mat gives implies that he though of these two events as one just as everyone else did, it's just by happen stance, (or because the original document did) that he preserves the two (perhaps the original document did because there really were two questions in the beginning). I have shown above direct evidence that Mark was deal with two questions and collapsed them into one: Jesus speaks of one thing, the stones wont be left one another (the context is the temple) but then Mark suddenly sticks in end times stuff and changes it to a purl "these things."

This is textual criticism. This is exactly what the work of lower criticism invovles. The only thing I'm missing that a real textual critic would do would be to look at the various ms of these existing passages and show their differences and ry to relate that the analysis. I no longer have my textual apparatus after moving so many times in the last view years. I don't have the time or Patience to look it up, and I think I have a good argument anyway.

*The phrase on that page that documents my view is this: "Nevertheless, the idea of a pre-Markan passion narrative continues to seem probable to a majority of scholars. One recent study is presented by Gerd Theissen in The Gospels in Context, on which I am dependent for the following observations." (Peter Kirdy). Now some atheist is goign to say "that's just for the Passaion narrative not a whole pre Mark redaction" but with Koester the Passion narrative includes several redactions of books such as Eterton 2, GThomas, and others. It includes much more than just the passion.

Does the Universe Exist? Is HRG an abstraction?

One of the major -perennial, knock-down-dragout fights I've had with atheists on the net is with HRG the Austrian Mathematician on CARM over Tillich's existential ontology, especially his argument against being itself as an abstraction. All of his arguments assume that being itself is an abstraction. As I pointed out last time Tillich denied this but HRG refuses to accept it even in spite of the fact that Tillich denied it. But what's totally hilarious is that HRG gives away the store, and I think he knows this, I'll get to that in a minute.

Before I get into that I will speak to this concept of the universe as not exiting. "How could it be," you might ask, "that the universe doesn't exist when I am here, I see a world around me, the world is the universe?" But is "the world" the universe? Universe is a concept. The world does not come with convenient labels telling us what things are. We have to decide what things are. We see a mass of sense data and qualia bombarding our senses. We ask "what is this stuff around us? to make sense of it we invent the notion of a  universe. We don't see a plaque on the side Jupiter saying "universe, self caused and undersigned." Nor do we see "universe by God." We decide it's a universe and we decide what that means. True we have what appear to be real sense data to go on, but it's still our conceptualization.

Take the night sky for example. The night sky is actually a myth. How can that be? it's right there, just open your eyes and look up. But what are we really looking at? Are we seeing the starts as they truly are? No, through science we know now that the light of each star that is just now reaching us is coming to us over millions of years. In fact, theoretically, all the stars could have gone out and we wouldn't know it for some time. Moreover, not only is the light old and shows us things as they appeared a long long time before humans even existed, but the stars are not in the places they appear to be. We know now that gravitational lenses distort the location and also existence of some stars.  Some stars could be reflections of other stars and they are all in different places. What seemed to true and clear at one time is actually non existent. The night sky exists, but its not what we think it is. Now as to this thing we call "universe," we make up theories of its origin with NO means of empirically verifying if those theories are right. We are imposing our own ideas of order upon the pile of sense data and we have no real way of checking to see it it's right. But those who worship our methods of investigation of the natural world tell us that we can't believe anything unless it's checked out by their methods. Yet the universe itself can't be totally checked out.

The universe is actually an abstraction. It's an abstract concept based upon calculating and reducing what we observe to averages and tendencies and conceptual understanding. The whole concept of induction and the notion of scientific empirical proof is based upon abstracting the concrete and reducing it to averages. That's what statistical probability is. Probability is an abstraction. Things fall through the cracks of abstraction and of empirical science. For example most men tend to be physically bigger than most women. As a result men tend to be stronger than women. But there are plenty of women out there who could kick my ass. My former next door neighbor was much bigger than I am and broader shoulders and could have mopped the floor with me. I used to tell people that in her youth she secretly played for the Dallas Cowboys. When they asked "under what name?" I would tell them, "Bob Lilly." Yet on average I should be stronger than any woman.

So the universe is an abstraction. It's a concept we impose upon the pile of sense data. This is science but it's also what Heidegger calls "metaphysics." Metaphsyics Not spooks and esp and strange things but the tendency to reduce sense data and group it under a given organizing principle that determines our understanding. The whole science of cosmology is actually metaphysics by that definition. But if you asked anyone "is the universe real?" we would have to say "sure." Yet it's also an abstraction. So when HRG tells me that being itself is an abstraction what does that really mean? If it means, as he says it does, that Being itself is not real, then the universe isn't real either. But they can both refer to real things and still be abstractions.

consider the following exchange:

Quote:

Originally Posted by HRG

Then the universe can also be the basis of its own existence.

Meta:O, now that's interesting. who told you that? what star do you see through a telescope that has that printed on it's side? Since everything we know is contingent, why should we think this is not contingent? Well in fact if space and time are two aspects of the whole and the whole is dependent upon each space and time, then how can you make the claim that the whole is the basis? why wouldn't the parts be the basis?

this would of course assume for certain that you know the universe is not created. so how do you know that? where's the label printed that says "self made universe?"

Quote:HRG

Since there is no logical reason why there has to be a beginning of this chain, all that you say about God is special pleading.

Meta:again, you can't understand the concept. I spoke right to this and I say "he doesn't get it." why? because I said "whatever the basis is that is the basis." We are not talking about the cosmological argument, or cause and effect or any of that. the basis is the basis, if the universe is it's own basis then I guess the universe is being itself. so why aren't you worshiping the universe?

but I have better reason to assume it's not and that something else is involved. But it's not a matter of a chain of causal relationships.

Quote:HRG

See above. There is nothing illogical about a chain without a first element. Example: negative integers.

Meta:yes, there sure it's. circular reasoning, begging the question. trying to subvert a a line of clausal effects because you don't like what it implies. but that's not the issue. the chain would be being itself if that is the basis of all things. so you still have God.


We are not stuck with such a petty version of God however, because it's silly to assume there could be an endless stream of arbitrary necessities.

Quote:HRG

It does not explain the existence of this "first cause". It just postulates it. I can equally well postulate the existence of an infinite chain; this has the advantage that I do not need your special pleading.

Meta:It's not even about a first cause. In Tillich's world the Cosmological argument diminishes the greatness of God. It really has nothing to do with a first cause. You are bringing stuff in from arguments because you are not willing to learn about Tillich.

Quote:HRG

Definitions <>existence proof.

Meta:silly gimmickry

Quote:HRG

The premise "there must be a final cause" is wrong.

Meta:being itself is not based upon that premise. but you are totally and absolutely wrong and waxed you on the floor everything we argued it. you don't even respond to half the answer. But as it so happens in this discussion that is totally irrelevant. you are shooting blindly hoping this applies and it does not. you are going to have to learn soemthing about Tilich to argue with him.



HRG:
[quoet]Fine. Being itself (a concept) cannot cause anything.[/QUOTE]

Meta:It doesn't have to. that's not the issue. That that is' the "basis" is not the same as saying it's the cause.

At the end of all this I made the above point about the universe and reiterated that fact that Han's arguemnts assume an abstraction where there is none, and that his own guiding principle (which he takes as self causing and self sufficient) is an abstraction as well, and one abstraction is as good as another, then he has failed to address my arguments.

His answer? He says he wont talk to me anymore (promises!, promises!) for two reasons:

 (1) I have not been responsive to his arguments.

I've been so non responsive I showed that the founding premise to all of his arguments is wrong and that his arguments don't apply to my mine for that reason, and that his basic argument about abstractions also defeats his own alternative to God.

(2) I am insulting.

I am insulting by saying he's dishonest becuase when I showed that Tillicih denies that being itself is an abstraction then Hans says he's lying, and that means then Hans is not being honest or fair, and pointing that out is insulting to him.

But you know, a screen on a message board might just be an abstraction too. Does HRG exist? No he does not. Metacrock does not exist. My parents didn't name me that.

As with Being itself and God, being abstraction doesn't mean I don't exist, does it mean Hans doesn't exist? It doesn't, but it might mean his arguments don't exist.

HRG's Arguments on Tillich's God as Being Itself.

HRG is Hand Reginold Grum a mathematician from Austria who has been my nemisis on CARM for about eight years now.

HRG on carm

http://forums.carm.org/v/showthread.php?p=5830551&posted=1#post5830551

Quote:

Originally Posted by Metacrock The builder of the car is a bad analogy becuase it casts God in the role big guy in the sky. That would mean belief in God is merely adding one more fact to the universe. God is not just one more fact, God is not an object alongside other objects, but the basis upon which all existence coheres, the basis of all existence.

HRG

Including his own ? If all existence needs a basis, then what basis is there for this god's existence ?

Meta:

He's saying is God the basis of his own existence. First here's how I usually answer the question; why doesn't God need a cause:

First check to see if the Skeptic has managed to disagree with line A.6 becasue the answer to this objection is built into the argument there. If that premise has been granted than essentially the skeptic has granted this point. Since there must be a final cause which begins the chain of cause and effect, logically the final cuase itself is not subject to it. So God is that point and therefore does not require a cause. There essentially five answers to this argument:

a) God is the final cause and by defintion does not need a cause himself.

The internet atheist will argue until dooms day that if "everything must have a cause" than God must have one too. This is of course illogical. God does not require a cause for several reasons:

This is merely a priori, if there must be a place where the chain stops, logically that place is the final cause of all things, which is what we say God is. Therefore God cannot need a Cause.

b) Everything but God needs cause

We are arguing that everything has to have a cause, except one this, that is the "final cause" or "first cause," the cause of all causes. Trying to the turn the words of the argument against itself wont work because we specify "everything but one needs a cause." Now this is not circular becasue the proof of the hypothosis is that no other alternative works, not that we merely stipulate it. Since this is the only alternative that adequately explains things, it is the most logical alternative.

c) By Definition God is not an effect

By definition God is beyond the natural realm of cause and effect, if not, "He" Would not be God, because that's what God is

d) all the more reason to assume God.

Since there must be a final cause, God is the only alternative since God is eternal and not arbitrary.

2) God is Being itself and thus trasncends The laws of Cause and effect.

a) God is not a thing alongside other things in creation.

God is by definition not a thing alongside other things in creation (ontologically speaking) but is on the order of being itself; the cause of the whole, which means God is the creator of the chain of cause and effect is therefore logically outside of it. (see also Timothy Ware The Orthodox Chruch; Paul Tillich, The Courage to Be, and Dynamics of Faith, Systematic Theology, and John MacQuarrie Principles of Christian Theology).

b) Being itself

God is Being Itself (see above) Being has to be. The fact that there is anything at all indicates that there is no such thing as true nothingness. If anything is than there must have always been something. Since God is Being itself in a sense we could say that being causes God,although this is not an adeuate way to pu it.

3) God is Spiritual and not physical, thus does not need physical cause

4) God's essence is his existence.

a) The Scholastic answer:

God's essence is his existence. The thing that makes God what he is (essence) coincides with the fact that he is (existence).For all other things the essence of a thing is to be the particular thing that it is. But with God the essence of the divine is to to be; thus, God's being is the same as his essence and to be the certain thing that God is is to be. God cannot fail to exist and requires no cause. see Eteinne Gilson, God And Philosophy.

b) This is the only logical answer,

otherwise we just have an ifinite regress of the same problem; it's a logical deduction

5) Proper use of Ocam's Razor

It would be a useless multiplication of entitites to posist a cause of God; God is sufficient explaination in and of "Himself" and logically deos not requrie a cuase.
The argument proves prior existance of creative "Source" as origin of the univserse, by logical deduction as the most plausible answer. Logically it cannot be an infitine regression, cannot be subject to the same laws of cause and effect but must be "first cause." Logically it must be eternal, and must be necessary to the existance of the singularity that produced the universe, by the law of Ockum's razor cannot be multiplied to include an infintie regress. Logically than we are talking about an erternal creative agent that stands behind all existance as the cause of all that is that creates as a free creative act; "that thing," as Aquinas says, "we call God."

F. Objection 2: Eternal Cause Cannot have Time bound Effects

1) Can timeless facts cause timebound facts?

Metaphysics and Epistemology of Causation Robert C. Koons (University of Texas)

a) Yes they can.

QUOTE:

First, we must admit that logical and mathematical realities, although they are certainly outside physical spacetime, can be causally efficacious. Otherwise, it would be impossible for us to have knowledge in logic and mathematics, and impossible for us to think about and refer to particular mathematical objects, like specific numbers or numerical relations.

Second, it seems plausible to suppose that space and time are themselves definable or constructible in terms of causal relations. One event is earlier than another, just in case the first is causally prior to the second, or if the first is spatially related to an event causally prior to the second. Two events are in the same spatiotemporal neighborhood just in case there are direct causal relations between the two. What we call physical or measurable time is a simple and systematic system of measurement that can be imposed on the whole network of causal relations. It is reasonable to expect that some of the causal network will lie outside of the system of measurable space-time. At least, it would be a remarkable coincidence if all of the causal network could be included in a single simple and systematic measurement system.

Therefore, from this perspective, it seems reasonable to think that there might be exceptions to the general rule of causation occurring within physical spacetime.

Third, scientific realism depends on the possibility of timeless causation. Scientific realism is the thesis that we sometimes know that our scientific theories are approximately true. Philosophers and historians of science are generally agreed that the acquisition of empirical data alone does not determine which scientific theories we accept. This is known as the "indeterminacy of theory by data". In addition to data, we use considerations of simplicity, symmetry, and elegance to guide our theory choice. For example, scientists accepted Copernicus' theory despite the fact that, for over 200 years, it did not fit the astronomical data as well as Ptolemy's theory. The fit with data was less important than the fact that Copernicus's model was vastly simpler than the ramshackle, epicyle-laden Ptolemaic model.

However, if our choice of theories is guided by considerations of simplicity and elegance, then our scientific beliefs constitute knowledge only if these aesthetic preferences are a reliable guide to the truth. In order for these to be truly reliable, there must be some causal mechanism that ensures that the deep structure of the world (as describable by our theories) is, by and large, very simple, symmetrical, elegant, etc. Any such causal mechanism must be a timeless fact, since it causes the history of the world to take a certain form or shape. This is especially so in light of general relativity, which takes the form of space and time to be themselves an essential part of the structure of the world. Hence, there must be a cause that determines the spacetime structure of the universe, introducing a bias toward simplicity. Thus, there must be at least one cause that lies outside of time.

Is God the basis for his own existence? That question doesn't make any sense. The statement that promoted it applied to contingent existence so it doesn't apply to God. But since God is not a thing in creation alongside other things then we can't really ask if he's the basis of his own existence. It's a nonsense question to begin with. But technically asiety has always been assumed to be self sustaining. Of course if you say that the atheists try to turn into a contradiction because they don't understand it.


HRG:

That a thing exists is just a fact. It is a philosophical postulate that this fact needs a basis, or that existence has to "cohere". You are welcome to it, but I don't share it. I regard it as an anthropomorphic imagination.

Meta

In fact he's actually doing what Tillich called "looking only at the surface." Here is someone who doesn't understand depth fo being. He thinks being is only surface, things are what they seem, there's nothing going on beyond just the fact of things existing.

He asserts that it's a philosophical postulate that things need a basis that shows me he doesn't understand the concept. Say materialism at its post shallow, thing are just brute facts and that's all they are. They still have reasons for existing, we call them "causes." We still assert then need them. The basis for that is whatever the basis is. It still must be there whatever it is because we still believe in causes. We have not established that anything can just start existing for no reason at all Begin a fact does not mean it's a fact without a reason. Can you think of any other instance in which an atheist materialist would allow for things just popping out of nothing than the creation of the universe? Why don't we see things popping into existence all the time?

HRG dogmatically discounts any sort o ontology a prori merely because he knows it's going to lead to God. But is nothing more than an ideological predilection. There is no basis in scinece for the idea that things are surface only.

Quote:Metacrock

So it's not something can be laid alongside other things and terms "another fact in the universe." That's like trying to use a scale to weigh itself.

 HRG:

Thus it is as meaningless to speak about the weight of the scale as about the existence of this god.

Meta

That doesn't make any sense either. He's just trying to win by cheating, ruling God out by twisting the language rather than understanding the concepts. It is meaningless to speak of the scale but he's the one doing that. HE is the one who asked about God's cause and if he's the basis of his own existence, that's demanding the weight of scale, talking about why t's a foolish question is not demanding the weigh to fhte scale it's sayign i'ts a foolish question! The foolish question is the atheist argument!

HRG

You carefully try to remove your God from the need of objective arguments for his existence. But that removes him as well from the realm of objective existence.

 Meta:

Well you have to since you want me to talk about it. I told you it can't be spoken it's beyond langaue and beyond undersanding, it can be experinced. But you poo poo experience and foment the propaganda that all experince is BS so you just refuse a prpori to eve rthing clealry  or honestly about any issue connected with God.

This is also and switch because he's actually reversing the true understanding of objective and of empirical. Empirical doesn't mean absolute objective evdience it means first hand experience. So my religious experience is empirical evidence of God. Empirical and objective are not the same thing. Objective is a pretense. There is no such thing as objective, there is varying degrees of subjective. He wants to make the pretense that abstracting particulars through statistics and probability is "objective" but in reality it's nothing like objective, it's creating cracks through which a lot of data falls to the way side but hat suits the atheist need to lose the phenomena. When  you see the dishonesty that HRG employs you will see what I mean by "pretense."

Quote:Metacrock

The problem with the hurricane analogy is that it doesn't take into account the basis of what consciousness is. God is not just an impersonal force or a happenstance or set of circumstances. I don't blame you for saying there's no clear idea here. Because that's what it means to say God is beyond our understanding, we don't have a convenient thing for it.

 HRG

If this alleged god is beyond our understanding, you should heed Wittgenstein's advice: "What one cannot speak about, one must remain silent about".

Meta:

ahahaha that was Hegel! You are misquoting! typical, typical. But hey I would remain silent, except you want listen. you wont accept the need to seek and then go seek yourself. Of cousre i"m not considered with HRG seeking, I know he never will, he's way too invested as a would be big shot in the Adelaide he get's from being an atheist. But who who read his misguided insincerity need to understand that taling and silence are both the same, everything is inadequate short of actually experiencing God for yourself. So everything I can say about it is just a means moving the reader close to the point where s/he will be willing to seek.

here I refer to HRG's tendency to bring up his silly little "three partical univdrse" non answer taht he always beings up:


 I have beaten that silly unfounded assertion so many times it's not funny.

(1) 3pu would be being, God is being itself, therefore, 3pu has god.

(2) unfounded assertion that one can assert God or lack of God based upon the appearance of world--that is the same logic as the design argument. In design argument you assert this cannot be done, and now assert it can be done in your argument. contradiction!

(3) only thing it could possibly prove is that God is not interested in doing much. not that there is no God

(4) God has to exist in all possible worlds, that proves that God has to exist. 3pu does noting but prove that God exits!

(5) there is no such thing as 3pu you are merely asserting it's assumed possible becuase you want to beat my God argument. you have not evidence at all that a 3pu is even possible. I have good reason to believe it's not, therefore, 3pu is not a possible world!


at various times I've argued all five of these and more. you have never beaten one. any one of them clobbers your argument.

you are bringing the old propaganda out of moth balls because you have nothing to say. But this is dead horse and you can't make it run by beating it yet again.

not just a dead horse it's throttled bag of horse bones.

in the words of our illustrious former Governor of Texas, the late great Anne Richards, "that God wont hunt." __________________


now at this point he charges the Being itself thing with being an abstraction and all his answers are based upon that premise.

At this point I quote the long quote that I did of Tillich in the Part 2 of the into to Tillich's ontology:

When a doctrine of God is initiated by defining God as being itself, the philosophical concept of being is introduced into systematic theology. This was so in the earliest period of Christian theology and has been so in the whole history of Christian thought. It appears in the present system [meaning in his systematic theology] in three places, in the doctrine of God where God is called being as being or the ground and the power of being; in the doctrine of man…and in the doctrine of Christ where he is called manifestation of New Being…In spite of the fact that classical theology has always used the concept of “being” the term has been criticized from the standpoint of nominalistic philosophy and that of personalistic theology. Considering the prominent role which the concept plays in the system it is necessary to reply to the criticisms and at the same time to clarify the way in which the term is used in its different applications.

The criticism of the nominalists and their positivistic decedents to the present day is based upon the assumption that the concept of being represents the highest possible abstraction. It is understood as the gneus to which all other genera are subordinated with respect to universality and with respect to the degree of abstraction. If this were the way in which the concept of being is reached, nominalism could interpret it as it interprets all universals, namely, as communicative notions which point to particulars but have no reality of their own. Only the completely particular, the thing here and now, has reality. Universals are means of communication without any power of being. Being, as such, therefore, does not designate anything real. God, if he exists, exists as a particular and could be called the most individual of all beings.

The answer to this argument is that the concept of being does not have the character that nominalism attributed to it. It is not the highest abstraction, although it demands the ability of radical abstraction. It is the expression of the experience of being over against non-being. Therefore, it can be described as the power of being which resists non being. For this reason the medieval philosophers called being the basic transcendetntale, beyond the universal and the particular. In this sense was understood alike by such people as Parmenides in Greece and Shankara in India. In this sense its significance has been rediscovered by contemporary existentialists such as Heidegger and Marcle. The idea of being lies beyond the conflict of nominalism and realism. The same word, the emptiest of all concepts when taken as an abstraction, becomes the most meaningful of all concepts when it is understood as the power of being in everything that has being.[viii]

from system one* around page 167.

To this Hans (HRG) says "he's just using semantics!" he goes on using the same old arguemnts! I just proved that he's dead wrong. Tillich says point bland "ti's not an abstraction!" moreover, he explains at length why that's the case and that expiation should make sense in the context of the two pieces I posted of intro to his ontology. It should be clear at that point that Tillich is not merely using semantics but that he has an elaborate sysetm of which HRG knows nothing and he doesn't want to know anything of it. He's merely fudiging the ponit to keep up the appearance that his arguments apply when Obviously they do not.

He's just using semantics! in other words. I cathc him point blank, the guy syas you are wrong! What does he say "I refuse to accept that I'm wrong, Tillich must mean what I said even he doesn't know it." I didn't say that but what he did say says that in other words.

To put it bluntly HRG says "I cannot be wrong even when its proved."

to me this is total dishonesty.


*Systematic Theology Volute I by Paul Tillich

Intro to Tillich's Ontology part 2:Being Itself and The Power of Being

 In this essay, which is a chapter from the new book I'm now working on, I'm moving toward defining what I think Tillich means exactly by being itself. It's a long journey but an important one.
What does Tillich actually mean by “being itself?” Does he mean the same things as other theologians who use the phrase? It’s a mysterious sounding phrase and Tillich never actually comes out and says what he means by it. As I will show there is a reason for this, and I will show what I think that reason in is. In the mean time the task of this chapter is to deduce exactly what Tillich actually means by this phrase. There are three basic possibilities:

Three alternatives as to meaning


(1) The basic fact that things exist is all that the concept of “God” amounts to.

(2) There is a special quality to being, an impersonal aspect” ground of being” or “being itself” and that quality constitutes ‘the divine.’ This possibility excludes God as “king of the universe.”

(3) God is beyond our understanding, we can’t explain God but God is on a higher metaphysical level, and is not a thing to be classed with other things in creation; God is foundational to creation and to all things; God is “on the order of being itself; this might include but is not limited to a consciousness, or something like a Platonic form.



The first alternative can be ruled out immediately. If this were the case it would make Tillich an out and out atheist, with no belief in “God” to any real extent, and a very cynical atheist (more so than most) because he would be an atheist who can’t openly own up to his atheism. This is not really realistic possibility and this becomes clear as one reads Tillich. He’s clearly talking about something that is real and that is distinguished form just the mere fact that things exist. In fact he ruled this out himself in speaking of being “having depth” and excluding the possibility of atheism on the grounds that “being has depth” and that if one is aware of this one cannot be an atheist.

The name of infinite and inexhaustible depth and ground of our being is God. That depth is what the word God means. And if that word has not much meaning for you, translate it, and speak of the depths of your life, of the source of your being, of your ultimate concern, of what you take seriously without any reservation. Perhaps, in order to do so, you must forget everything traditional that you have learned about God, perhaps even that word itself. For if you know that God means depth, you know much about Him. You cannot then call yourself an atheist or unbeliever. For you cannot think or say: Life has no depth! Life itself is shallow. Being itself is surface only. If you could say this in complete seriousness, you would be an atheist; but otherwise you are not.[i]

This one quote is very important because it gives us several clues as to the meaning of the phrase as well as how to understand the reality of God as the Ground of Being. We will come back to this phrase. For the moment the important point to realize is that since he distinguishes between being as having depth, and “surface level of things” presumably the mere fact of existence, it seems clear he’s saying God is more than just the fact that things exist. This still doesn’t let him off the hook, however, in the eyes of some theological groups because it does not allay the Evangelical fears that what he really means is still un impersonal source of life rather than a God with a will and plan for your life. I will argue eventually that he does mean a God with will and a plan for your life, although the “plan” may not be as overt as we would like, the will may be harder to discern than we would like.

The second alternative, a special aspect of being, is no doubt part of what he means. I set up the second alternative to raise the issue raised by one of my former professors from Perkins school of Theology (SMU) that Tillich is merely reducing God below the level of the cognitive will to avoid coping with the moral aspects of God’s commands. [ii] The issue of consciousness and personhood of God will be discussed in a subsequent chapter, and must be bracketed for the moment. On the other hand, to the extent that third alternative implies a stronger connection to the personal or the conscious than does the first I must tip my hand already and say that I will argue for the third alternative. Tillich does say that God is not “a person” (because he’s not a thing among other things in creation—not a contingency) but is “the personal itself.” This implies that God does contain an aspect of the conscious in some sense, specifically the structure that gives rise to consciousness as a whole. He speaks of being’s self affirmation.[iii] This might lead us to think that he really did hold out of a “personal God,” and yet what is the “personal itself?” We are back at square one wondering what this “itself” thing is about. If the third alternative is not what Tillich had in mind, which I argue it is, it is what I have in mind anyway. Nevertheless, one clue we have is the distinction between possibility 2 and possibility 3, and what Tillich is doing with the concept of God in speaking this way. There is a more important distinction between option 2 and 3 than just the personal dimension; that of the distinction between God as just an aspect of being alongside other aspects, vs God as the basis of all reality, which the term “ground of being” might imply. The issue here is independent of the personal dimension, but no less important. The major point that Tillich is trying to make in speaking of God as “being itself” rather than “as aspect of being” is that God is not just another part of being; God is the basis of all being. The way of approaching the topic and the way speaking about God is Tillich’s attempt to guard the mystery of God without trying to explain things that are beyond our understanding, while communicating enough to tease one into seeking deeper realization.

We can see this method at work in the way Tillich writes about other great Christian theologians. One such example is his take on Luther. Luther was one of his heroes, he was Lutheran, so it’s only natural that he would seek to spot one of his pet issues in Luther’s work. I am sure that he’s reading it in, or rather, I am prepared to find that he’s reading it in. If one were to argue “he’s only reading his own hobby horse into Luther,” I would be content to go along with that take. On the other hand, there must be element of this view in Luther that allow him to read it in (if that’s what he’s doing) and more importantly, it does show us what Tillich believed, whether or not it shows us what Luther thought. Tillich believed that Luther had one of the most profound conceptions of God in human history. [iv] Tillich quotes Luther:

Luther Denies everything which could make God finite, or a being beside others. ‘Nothing is so small, God is even smaller. Nothing is so Large God is even larger.’ ‘He is an unspeakable being, above and outside everything we can name and think. Who knows what this is, which is called-- God?’ ‘It is beyond body, beyond spirit, beyond everything we can see, hear and think.’ He makes the great statement that God is nearer to all creatures then they are to themselves.

Tillich quotes Luther:

‘God has found a way that his own divine essence can be completely in all creatures, and in everyone especially, deeper, more internally, more present than the creature is to itself an at the same time and at the same time no where and can’t be comprehended by anyone so that he embraces all things and is within them. God is at the same time in every piece of sand totally, and nevertheless in all above all and out of all creatures.’

Tillich continues:

In these formulae the only conflict between theistic and pantheistic tendencies is solved; they show the greatness of God, the inescapability of his presence, and at the same time his absolute transcendence. I would say very dogmatically that any doctrine of God that leaves out one of these elements does not really speak of God but of something less than God.[v] (emphasis mine).

This is a very important concept and the key to the whole issue of understanding the notion of God as being itself; that is this idea that God is not a being alongside other beings in the universe, or in creation. God is the basis of all being. In fact Tillich does not speak of God as “a being” he leaves out the “a” but simply says that God is “being itself” not “a being itself.”

Leaving out the “a” is essential to understanding the concept. This is essential because the whole concept turns upon the idea that God is above the level things, above contingency, in a category by itself. True to the mystical concept Tillich understands that God is beyond our comprehension. God blows away all of our easy preconceived categories that we have taken for granted since we first learned to talk. Yet though God is beyond everything we name, think, or understand, he is beyond these things in a metaphysical sense; yet “God does not sit beside the world looking at it from outside but he is acting in everything in every moment.”[vi] Tillich understands omnipotence not as talk about what God can and cannot do but as “creative power.” It’s this sense of God as a dynamic reality working actively in concert with the natural world that endears him to the process theologians. [vii]

Of course none of this will satisfy the “new atheist” fundamentalists. The atheist fundies want only hard facts. This is all a phantasmagoria of made up crap. But, to get to the point where we can talk about the “facts” we have to be certain of what we are talking about. It’s very important to understand the concepts clearly. Some of the atheists with whom I have tried to discuss these things for years, still do not get the “not a being” aspect of it. Because they don’t understand this their arguments never apply. They are constantly arguing “there can be no such thing as a necessary being.” But their argument applies to a big man in the sky, a localized individual being who is like others, one of many, and who functions in a very similar way to biological humanity. They can’t for the life of them seem to understand the concept that eternal necessary being doesn’t mean “an eternal necessary being” but “being itself” the thing that being is, the begin ness of being so to speak, rather an individual being. Dawkins argument that God is improbable (The God Delusion) is based upon these same assumptions. Thus the argument he makes would not apply to any Christians view because it assumes God is a big biological organism, but it applies even less to Tillich’s view because it assumed on top of that that God is an individual manifestation of being and thus subject to being. Anything using the indefinite article assumes one of many. A penny assumes there is more than one penny, and this particular penny is an example of the many pennies that there are. A being is one of many, it is an example of one of the many beings that there are. But God is not a single individual being. That doesn’t mean there’s more than one God, it means that God transcends the easily understood category that we take for granted. In New Testament God is “The God” (‘0 Theos). This is a way of speaking of the quality of divinity itself. Literally John 1: 1 says “The God.” “The word was with the God.” One could translate the word was with deity, or as “the word was divine.”

This is the sort of reason for which Tillich loses the “a” in “being.” God is not one of many but is on a higher level and belongs to a higher class. God is not a product of being. God is not subject to being, conversely God cannot cease being. This is part of what Tillich means by “depth.” If we know being has depth we can’t be atheists. Why would that be? Because the situation in regard to being is not what it seems on the surface? The easily taken for granted situation that appears on the surface is not what is, and what is, is not what seems to be. We look at the surface we assume things exist, all that exists must be tangible and must be one of the many things in the world, the huge list of ships and strings and sealing wax, cabbages and kings; yet God does not belong on the list. God is not one of these things but is the basis of these things. God is the foundation of their existence, the basis upon which they are allowed to cohere; the ground of their being. Thus God is above the list. The divine cannot be represented with the indefinite article because there can only be one ground of being. There can’t be a pantheon, they would all cancel each other out; which one is the ground of the other’s being? If there is one being in all of existence, then that one being is the ground of all being. If there is not one they all cancel each other out because they are all the ground of being then there is no ground of being. One could argue “its existence by a committee” but what’s the ground of the committee? If each member of the committee is “a being” then how can the committee itself be “the ground of being?” Atheists pondering that will probably think in terms of a committee of very powerful beings could so make all the objects in the universe and thus be the creators of the universe. Sure they could but that’s not really the point. That would just be moving problem back one stage because you have to ask “what is the ground of being for this committee. It’s an eternal committee of individual’s beings that are not the ground of being but as a committee they are the ground of being? The problematic nature here is obvious. It’s much more elegant to propose a single ground of all being that is eternal, necessary, self sustaining and that transcends any particular list of articles in the universe by virtue of the fact that it is the maker of list. This is an example of what Tillich means by this enigmatic phrase “if you know being has depth you can’t be an atheist.” But of course to move to the point where it’s more than just a concept we need to say more. What does Tillich really mean by the phrase “ground of being,” what does that tell us about the nature of God? Tillich is fond of saying that God is the power of being.


God – power of being


Tillich speaks of God as the “Power of being,” and in his Systematic Theology (vol. II) He groups this phrase with ground of being and being itself as epithets of the divine. In volume II he explains what he means by the power of being and he does so in the context of answering an argument leveled at this concept by the nominalists. This is an example of what has been said above about Tillich’s concern for the philosophical controversies of the middle ages; the period was still living in Tillich’s mind. Yet this is not merely an example of a musty out of date thinker raking up ideas form the past no one understands or holds to, or reliving battles of the past long forgotten. When we read the term “nominalistis” in his writings we should read “modern scientific reductionists” as well as from Tillich’s time “postivisits.” The analogy is perfect and it was very real for Tillich. The same criticism made by the nominalists is made by modern reductionsits and scientism buffs. This very argument that Tillich answers in his Systematic Theology volume II has been made against my discussion of God as being itself by modern reductionistic atheists on the internet. This is a very long passage but it is well worth reading because it speaks volumes. Note in this passage the link between ground of being and power of being:

When a doctrine of God is initiated by defining God as being itself, the philosophical concept of being is introduced into systematic theology. This was so in the earliest period of Christian theology and has been so in the whole history of Christian thought. It appears in the present system [meaning in his systematic theology] in three places, in the doctrine of God where God is called being as being or the ground and the power of being; in the doctrine of man…and in the doctrine of Christ where he is called manifestation of New Being…In spite of the fact that classical theology has always used the concept of “being” the term has been criticized from the standpoint of nominalistic philosophy and that of personalistic theology. Considering the prominent role which the concept plays in the system it is necessary to reply to the criticisms and at the same time to clarify the way in which the term is used in its different applications.

The criticism of the nominalists and their positivistic decedents to the present day is based upon the assumption that the concept of being represents the highest possible abstraction. It is understood as the gneus to which all other genera are subordinated with respect to universality and with respect to the degree of abstraction. If this were the way in which the concept of being is reached, nominalism could interpret it as it interprets all universals, namely, as communicative notions which point to particulars but have no reality of their own. Only the completely particular, the thing here and now, has reality. Universals are means of communication without any power of being. Being, as such, therefore, does not designate anything real. God, if he exists, exists as a particular and could be called the most individual of all beings.

The answer to this argument is that the concept of being does not have the character that nominalism attributed to it. It is not the highest abstraction, although it demands the ability of radical abstraction. It is the expression of the experience of being over against non-being. Therefore, it can be described as the power of being which resists non being. For this reason the medieval philosophers called being the basic transcendetntale, beyond the universal and the particular. In this sense was understood alike by such people as Parmenides in Greece and Shankara in India. In this sense its significance has been rediscovered by contemporary existentialists such as Heidegger and Marcle. The idea of being lies beyond the conflict of nominalism and realism. The same word, the emptiest of all concepts when taken as an abstraction, becomes the most meaningful of all concepts when it is understood as the power of being in everything that has being.[viii]

Tillich tells us that the notion of God as being itself is old; it can be taken back to the pre-Socratics. It has been used throughout the history of the church. The two major criticisms are the idea that it is nothing but an empty abstraction and that is means an impersonal view of God. As will be seen both criticisms are false. The criticism that it is an empty abstraction is basically a reductionist criticism, going all the way back to the nominalists. In its modern incarnation it is a reductionist criticism. In refuting this argument Tillich implicitly denies that his concept of God is anything like an atheistic concept. He denies that his view is that the fact of existing things is God, or God is nothing more than the sheer fact of existence. The alternative to mere abstraction that Tillich offers is the “power of being.” By that he means being as an active force that resist nothingness. He almost makes it sound like nothingness is an active force, or like gravity, pulls us to the center of mass, or like water draining out of a sink. We are being sucked down the drain to the sewer of nothingness except the drain stopper of being prevents this. The transcendental transcends both universal and particular according to Tillich. In Platonic analogy that would give being itself the role of “the one” as the form of the forms. That’s probably somehow analogous to the role the idea played in Tillich’s understanding. What he says about the same word can be either the emptiest or the most meaningful of terms depending upon one’s assumptions, is actually a good fleshing out of what he means by being having depth. Not only is he saying that things are not as they seem on the surface, but one way in which they are not the same is that there’s a power to being that resists nothingness. Being is “on,” by that I mean it’s a positive force; it is the most basic thing aside from nothingness.

The quotation given above continues:

No philosophy can suppress the notion of being in this latter sense. It be hidden under presuppositions and reductive formulas, but it nevertheless underlies the basic concepts of philosophizing. For “being” remains the content, the mystery and the eternal aporia of thinking. No theology can suppress the notion of being as the power of being. One cannot separate them. In the moment in which one says that God is or that he has being, the question arises as to how his relation to being is understood. The only possible answer seems to be that God is being itself, the sense of the power of being, or of the power to conquer non being.[ix]

At this point the terminology gets sloppy and hazy. Is God the power of being? Is being itself the power of being? Is being the power of being? If being is the “power of being.” This is a redundant phrase. What does “being is the power of being” tell us about what being is? Of course we can always sort it out in our own way and hope we are on the same page with Tillich. God is the power of being, but that would mean that God is also something other than being which furnishes being its power. Unless we want to say that Being is power. What is being? Power. What is power, being? What in the heck are we saying? The answer is that Tillich says himself this phase “God is being itself” is a metaphorical way of speaking. It’s a symbol, it’s not meant to be a literal and precise formation tracing the essence of the divine. We might also note that John MacQuarrie makes a distinction between Being and “the beings.” Contingent beings are “the beings” and they cohere in reality because they participate in Being as creatures of the Being itself.[x] Being is the power to resist nothingness, the power to be. Thus we can say God is the basis upon which all that is coheres and has its being. God is the basis upon which “the beings” (all existing things) have their being. The power of being is its nature to generate becoming. Just as existentialism presupposes an essential to play off of, so becoming presupposes state of Being to develop from. Yet, these statements must be taken as metaphors, as Tillich himself says. We cannot understand these terms as scientific style terms which accurately tell us the physical make up and dimensions of a given object. These are not ways to promote a scientific understanding of God, or could hey be nor should they be.

sources

(sorry I can't make the end notes transfer and preserve the numbers)

[i] Paul Tillich, The Shaking of the Foundations. New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1948.

[ii] This was raised in a private discussion when one of my former professors was told I was working on this project.

[iii] Paul Tillich, The Courage to Be. London and Glasgow: Collins, the Fontana Library, 1952-74.175

[iv] Tillich, History, 247

[v] Ibid.

[vi] Ibid

[vii] That is according to my friend Scott Gross who studied process theology at Claremont with Hartshorne, D.Z. Phillips.

[viii] Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology volume II, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957, 10-11.

[ix] Ibid

[x] John MacQuarrie, Principles of Christian Theology, op cit (find where he says being and the beings)

Introduction to Paul Tillich's Existential Ontology (God as Being Itself)

Tillich as young man



Paul Tillich (1866-1965) was one of the most influential Christian theologians of the twentieth century. Tillich spoke to the times. He was painfully aware of the collapse of modernity (the beginning of which he traced from the enlightenment), and tried to formulate a concept of Christian theology for the dawning Postmodern era. In so setting up the dialogue with post modernity he forged the central concept with which this essay will concern itself: God as being itself, or The Ground of Being. Tillich was not the first theologian to think of this idea, nor the last to embrace it, he was probably its most famous supporter. He was born in Strazeddel, Brandenburg (Germany—now part of Poland). His father was a Lutheran minister and the family moved to Berlin in 1900. He studied at three universities, Berlin, Tübingen and Breslau, taking his doctorate in philosophy from the latter in 1911. He was ordained as a Lutheran minister in the following year. He served as Army Chaplin in World War I, after which he spent several years lecturing at several major universities in Germany. In 1933 he came to America to escape the Nazi movement. Reinhold Neibuhr, another major theologian of the century, had met Tillich in Germany and offered him a post at Union Theological Seminary in New York. He also moved to Harvard in 1954 and to University of Chicago in 1962, where he remained until his death.

Tillich was a modern thinker, aware of the breaking down of modernity into Post modernity. He was concerned with translating the Gospel into modern terms, and he felt keenly the issues of the mid twentieth century concerning socialism, cold war, existentialism, the growth of science and the shrinking of faith. He was engaged with secular society and the interplay between the Church and the world. This modernist cosmopolitan nature of Tillich’s gave him the reputation and image of a radical, an invocative speculative theologian. He put things in terms of the existentialist concerns of the era; he doesn’t talk about “God,” when he can talk about, “the object of ultimate concern.” He doesn’t talk about “that which nothing greater than can be conceived” when he can talk about “the ground of being,“ or better yet, “being itself.” For this reason it’s easy to overlook Tillich’s Orthodox nature. It’s easy to be carried away with the radical image of a theologian who contributed to the “death of God movement” (although without meaning to) and to assume he is shedding everything of the Christian past. It’s easy to hear him speak of “the God beyond God” and assume that that means he’s an atheist, and then to overlook the fact that Tillich never lost concern for the debates of the Christian Middle Ages. He was always influenced by Augustine, his concern over “ground of being” was a continuation of his Augustinian based neo Platonist assumptions and his concern for the break down of Augustinian synthesis after the onslaught of Thomism. “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.” He called “questionable” the idea of an impartial reading of “just the facts” yielding a clean unambiguous or unbiased “objective truth.” Tillich was too Hegelian and too Marxist to think that one could, as Carl Braaten puts it “survey the past in cool detachment.”

Such was the perspective that Tillich brought to History. He was not interested in history as a string of facts, or merely as an “objective” recitation of “what happened.” He saw history as a interpretation of where humanity has been and what humanity has understood. He saw that interpretation as a synthesis. Tillich transcended “church” history and “sacred history” he saw human history as happening together to all people, beyond the boarders of the church. He also saw the Spirit working beyond the boarders of the church, he saw God working beyond the boundaries of “sacred history” so that all of history was united. In this regard one of his interests was the use of the Logos in the church fathers. He was taken with Justin Martyr’s understanding of the Logos as working outside the church in all of humanity.

The common ground for both Tillich and Justin was the presence of the Logos beyond the boundaries of the church, making it possible for men in all religions to have a partial grasp of the truth, a love of beauty and a moral sensitivity. Tillich could stand ‘on the boundary’ 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. Tillich’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 truth, wherever it may be found, essentially belongs to us Christians.

Thus the Logos influence gives Tillich a seeming universalism but it’s easy to miss the fact that he is coming from a totally Orthodox Christian perceptive in the traditional apologists. The modern secular thought categories he employs make him seem radical and unconcerned with the Christian belief of the past, whereas in reality he is really concerned with translating into those categories the doctrines of the church both reformed and primitive which he held sacred implicitly. The Christian thought categories were his true mode of thought, so much so that the middle ages were alive for him. It’s from this perspective and out the concern for the truth of the Gospel that he sought to translate those Christian ideas into modern secular categories.

One of Tillich’s major signature moves is to translate the Gospel into categories that summarize the secular nature of society and speak to its relationship to God. He does this in the Tillichian terminology: autonomy, heteronomy, and Theonomy. Autonomy is the independence of modern society from God. The enlightenment, the rise of modern science, LaPlace’s statement “I have no need of that [God] hypothesis,” these are all examples of the autonomous nature of modern humans. The term applies specifically to forms of culture. Tillich’s concern for the role of Spirit in the Creation of culture came to him from his study with Ernst Troeltsch; Examples of this historical autonomy the era of Greek Philosophy, The Renaissance, The Enlightenment and modern secularism. Bonehoeffer spelled it out well enough in his phrase “man come of age.” Heteronomy is an imposed alien sense forced upon the masses. This is a view point that in Postmodern parlance is called “totalizing,” the view of the dreaded “metanarrative.” That is to say, a “totalizing view” is an overarching view that overshadows all else, an ideology. Heteronomy can be religious and often has been religious. Heteronomy the attempt of humans to take the place of the divine, it comes right out of the Augustinian concerns of Tillich. Augustine said that the City of Man can never be the City of God. No aspect of temporal power can ever claim to be the expressions of divine will, no human construct can ever claim to be the City of God. These two cities, that of God and that of “man” have different origins and different ends and though they live one inside the other, they can never claim to be the same or to subsume each others functions. Though Tillich was concerned with the secular though he did see the Logos as working beyond the boundaries of the church, he did not become confused and think that the church could impose the logos or that the state could subsume the divine will. In fact he remained ever vigilant against the proud claims of others toward heteronomy. Theonomy was the culture in which “inner potentialities of man are being fulfilled through the diving presence of the Spirit, giving powers, meaning and direction to the autonomous forms of life.” Tillich was adamant that a true situation of theonomy could never really be achieved. Theonomy does seem to be so much a matter of a theistic society as a society in which the Logos is at work and is allowed to freely interact with culture. The attempt to force this interaction would be heteronomy.

In the working out of these idioms we see a very Orthodox set of concepts, a very Christian set of concepts. These concepts are probably closer to the reformed movement but are not exclusive of the Orthodox of the East or the Roman Catholic. The three aspects of culture, autonomy, heteronomy, and theonomy are basically related to the Gospel. We see fall, the attempt of humanity to impose an answer in the type of priest craft, and in spirte the human institution, redemption through the spirit. This tripartite understanding of culture is Augustinian to the extent that we have the city of God and the City of man in relation to each other. The City of man is autonomous, the city of God is theonomy in that it allows the Spirit to move out and affect culture (autonomy) without trying to impose it’s own will or bend the City of Man to the ends of the City of God. The Divine city is located in the human city. The attempt to take over the human city and bend its ends and means to the purpose of the divine is the heteronominous or an er zots city of God. Thus Tillich’s seeming secularism, his radical nature, his Marxism, are actually means to the end of interpretation, they are the tools with which Tillich hoped to translate the Reformed understanding of the Gospel into modern categories of thought. When I say “Reformed” I am aware that Tillich was not Calvinist but Lutheran. I am using this term to mean “Reformational—of the Reformation” in a general sense. In so doing his aim was not to change the Gospel but to relate to modern people. He understood the changing of the maze ways and he sought to give the church a map with which it could following the shifting of the maze ways and to give secular society a means of continuity with the Christian tradition. In this sense he was striving to enable modern society to open to the possibility of theonomy. This same concern leads him into his definition of God as “being itself” or “the ground of being. These are terms that tie in specifically with issues that were important in the mid twentieth century. One thinks of Sartre’s Being and Nothingness, as well as its influence in Heidegger This terminology is coming right of modern mid twentieth century existentialism and yet at the same time it is also coming out of a much more ancient tradition of the church stretching back to the seventh century. At one and the same time Tillich both speaks the concept of “God” into modernity and gives it a currency of that day, and also in so doing connects it to the tradition of the church and brings back a concept the church had basically vacated.

Tillich is often mistaken for an atheist but it’s really his own fault. He seemed to have cultivated and cherished the confusing image of a radical innovator who purposely (so it seems) obscured his orthodox ideas and motives lurking underneath the surface. One of his most confusing moves was to state that “God does not exist.” It seems pretty obvious on a surface level that he was an atheist. But only the unwary who are not steeped in Tillich buy his statements at face value. Of course he does not mean there is no God. He’s using the term “exist” in a highly technical sense one that could be misleading. To understand this statement we have to plug in the second half of it: “God does not exist, he is being itself.” This seems contradictory, God doesn’t exist but God is being. So he’s juxtaposing being and existence. The meaning of that move is rooted in a whole systemic way of thinking that is pure Tillichian, which John MacQuarrie calls “Tillich’s Existential Ontology. “ One cannot understand Tillich without understanding his ontology. For Tillich existence (as a term) is for contingency. “Existing things” are contingent things. The term “Being” he reserves for necessary things. Here both ontologically as well as logically necessary are implied. Being itself is necessary in the modal sense, it is not dependent upon prior conditions, nor can it cease or fail. Thus, when he says “God does not exist” he Is not saying there is no God. He’s actually saying that God is not classified among existing things in creation. God is not a thing in creation along side other things. We can’t say “the universe contains rocks, trees, air, automobiles, penguins, sandwiches, junk yards, can openers, tooth brushes, swizzle sticks, and God.” God is a priori at a higher level, in a class by “him/herself.” God is the foundation of all that is. This is the meaning of the term “ground of being.” God is the basis of all that is and as such is not on a par with existing things, because existence is the level of contingent things. God is necessary in the sense of modal logic, and not contingent. The distinction between being and existence goes back to the distinction that Tillich draws between essence and existence. Essence is the potential of a thing, or the basis upon that thing rests and toward which is seeks to fulfill. Existence is its actuality. It is necessary for Tillich to make this kind of distinction between existence and essence, if God was on the level of existing things he would be subject to being, he would be just another thing in creation.

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[1] Sam Addison,  “Paul Tillich Bibliogrophy,” Gilford Lectures, website: URL http://www.giffordlectures.org/Author.asp?AuthorID=169 visited 8/3/2009. Addison is at University of Aberdeen.

[1] Carl E. Braaten, “Paul Tillich and The Classical Christian Tradition,” in A History of Christian Thought: From the Judaic and Hellenistic origins to Existentialism, Lectures by Paul Tillich. Carl E. Braaten ed. New York, a Touchstone book; Simon and Schuster, 1968. xxiv.

[1] Ibid, xvi

[1] Ibid., xvii

[1] Ibid, xix-xx

[1] Paul Tillich, A History of Christian Thought: From the Judaic and Hellenistic origins to Existentialism, Lectures by Paul Tillich. Carl E. Braaten ed. New York, a Touchstone book; Simon and Schuster, 1968. 528-30.

[1] Ibid., xxiii Oddly enough, because I know of no real connection, the elements of Tillich’s view on this point are strikingly similar to those of Albert Schweitzer in his understanding of the definition of civilization. Tillich’s Theonomous society would be Schweitzer’s ideal civilization.

[1] John MacQuarrie Principles of Christian Theology. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1966.

[1] Paul Tillich, The Shaking of the Foundations. New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1948.

[1] This was raised in a private discussion when one of my former professors was told I was working on this project.

[1] Paul Tillich, The Courage to Be. London and Glasgow: Collins, the Fontana Library, 1952-74.175

[1] Tillich, History, 247

[1] Ibid.

[1] Ibid

[1] That is according to my friend Scott Gross who studied process theology at Claremont with Hartshorne, D.Z. Phillips.

[1] Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology volume II, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957, 10-11.

[1] Ibid

[1] John MacQuarrie, Principles of Christian Theology,  op cit (find where he says being and the beings)

[1] find

[1] Tillich, ST I, 163.

[1]  Ibid.

[1] Ibid., 163-64

[1] Ibid, 164

[1] Ibid.

[1] Ibid.

[1] Ibid.

[1] Tillich, History…, op cit, 541.

[1] Tillich, ST 1, 166

[1] Tillich, ST I,  164.

[1] Ibid, 166

[1] Ibid, 168

[1]  Ibid., 169-170.

[1] Tillich, Courage…, op cit, find

[1] Tillich ST I 169.

[1]  Ibid., 171

[1] Ibid, 172

[1] Ibid.

[1] Ibid.