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A form of Ontological Argument
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 June 2011
Extract
Tillich is widely held to be among those Protestant theologians who proclaim considerable scepticism about the arguments for the existence of God. This particular form of scepticism is not an attack on any individual argument or set of arguments, but rather is a wholesale rejection of the possibility of there being any “argument” for the existence of God at all.
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- Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1977
References
1 Tillich, Paul, Systematic Theology (3 vols.; Chicago: University of Chicago, 1951–1963) 1.204Google Scholar (hereafter referred to by volume and page number in parentheses in the text).
2 Ibid., my emphasis.
3 Ibid., 1.205, my emphasis.
4 Ibid., my emphasis.
5 Cf. also Tillich, Paul, “Escape from God,” in The Shaking of the Foundations (New York: Scribner's Sons, 1948) 47.Google Scholar
6 Tillich, Paul, Dynamics of Faith (Harper Torchbook; New York: Harper & Row, 1957) 46.Google Scholar See also Tillich, Paul, “The Philosophy of Religion,” in What Is Religion? (Adams, James Luther, ed.; New York: Harper & Row, 1969) 71Google Scholar:”Itis meaningless to ask … whether the Unconditioned ‘exists’.;…”
7 In other words, the awareness must be logically prior to the question.
8 Moreover, I can sensibly ask this question of myself even given “my awareness” of God, because I can question whether my awareness is veridical.
9 Tillich, Paul, “The Two Types of Philosophy of Religion,” in Theology of Culture (Kimball, Robert C., ed.; A Galaxy Book; New York: Oxford University, 1964) 22.Google Scholar
10 Ibid.
11 Ibid., 23.
12 IIbid.,27.
13 Tillich, “The Philosophy of Religion,” 71.
14 However, sometimes Tillich equivocates on the term “exists” as well, as has often been pointed out.
15 Systematic Theology, 1.205, my emphasis.
16 Consequently, Tillich calls “an unconditioned being” a “contradiction in terms,” because to be “a” being is to be within reality and therefore to be conditioned.
17 Tillich, “The Two Types of Philosophy of Religion,” 22.
18 Ibid., 15, my emphasis.
19 Cf. Systematic Theology, 1.207.
20 Tillich, Paul, The Interpretation of History (trans. Rasetzki, N. A. and Talmey, Elsa L.; New York: Scribner's Sons, 1936) 83Google Scholar, quoted in Adams, James Luther, Paul Tillich's Philosophy of Culture, Science, and Religion (New York: Schocken Books, 1970) 45.Google Scholar
21 Tillich, “The Two Types of Philosophy of Religion,” 15.
22 Ibid.
23 Cf. Systematic Theology, 1.94.
24 Ibid., 1.177, my emphasis.
25 Brown, D. Mackenzie, ed., Ultimate Concern (Harper Colophon Books; New York: Harper & Row, 1965) 45.Google Scholar Cf. also Systematic Theology, 2.21.
26 Cf. Systematic Theology, 1.192.
27 Tillich, The Interpretation of History, 83, quoted in Adams, Paul Tillich's Philosophy, 45.
28 Paul Tillich, “The Conquest of the Concept of Religion in the Philosophy of Religion,” in What Is Religion?, 139–40, my emphasis.
29 Ibid., 124.
30 Tillich, “The Two Types of Philosophy of Religion,” 13.
31 Ibid., 15.
32 And which has been made “from Gaunilo and Thomas to Kant.” Ibid.
33 Ibid.
34 Tillich, “The Conquest of the Concept of Religion in the Philosophy of Religion,” 129.
35 That is, less universal than being-itself, but more universal than class concepts “designating a realm of being,” (Systematic Theology, 1.164).
36 Namely, the concepts of individuality and participation, dynamics and form, freedom and destiny, and the general categories of space, time, causality, and substance (Systematic Theology, 1.164–65).
37 Russell, Bertrand, The Principles of Mathematics (2nd ed.; New York: Norton, 1937) 449.Google Scholar
38 For example, the essence “treehood” (cf. Systematic Theology, 2.21).
39 Cf. Ibid., 2.20. See also Brown, ed., Ultimate Concern, 45, where Tillich refers to the “potentialities of existence which we usually call the essences of things … they have being, too; they are the power of being, which may become beings.”
40 For example, the general ontological concepts of individuality and participation.
41 Cf. Systematic Theology, 2.20.
42 Tillich, “The Two Types of Philosophy of Religion,” 13.
43 Ibid.
44 Ibid.
45 Systematic Theology, 1.191, my emphasis.
46 Tillich, “The Two Types of Philosophy of Religion,” 26.
47 Brown, ed., Ultimate Concern, 45.
48 In other words, in the sense that there is nothing self-contradictory in the concept of a tree that rules it out that there should be trees.
49 For example, from some as yet unexplained process of generation.
50 Brown, ed., Ultimate Concern, 45.
51 One of the strongest objections to entities which are treated as “possible beings” is that it seems impossible to provide any consistent criteria of identity for them. If something, e.g., “the possible tree,” is treated as a subject of which we can make predications, it is necessary for it to be possible to tell in what circumstances two predications are made of that same subject—lest we give up the notion that contradictory predications cannot be made of the same subject. Now while we have criteria by which we decide whether two statements are being made about the same actual tree, by what criteria can we decide whether two statements are being made about the same possible tree? How, for example, would we decide whether “the possible male tree” and “the possible spruce tree” are the same possible tree or two? But if we can't decide that, then how can the concept of identity be applied to “possible beings”? Yet what sense can be made of talking of entities which cannot meaningfully be said to be identical with themselves and distinct from others? (Cf. Kenny, Anthony, Descartes [New York: Random House, 1968] 168.Google Scholar Cf. also Quine, W. V. O., “On What There Is,” in From A Logical Point of View [2nd ed.; Harper Torchbooks; New York: Harper & Row, 1963] 4.)Google Scholar
52 Tillich notes (Systematic Theology, 1.166, n. 1) that space and time, which Kant had distinguished as the “forms of intuition,” are assimilated under his own model of the categories of the understanding.
53 Cf. Strawson, P. F., The Bounds of Sense (London: Methuen, 1966) 72.Google Scholar
54 What Tillich means by the form by which the mind “shapes” reality.
55 Cf. Brown, Stuart C., Do Religious Claims Make Sense? (New York: Macmillan, 1969) 163.Google Scholar