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Tillich and the Space-Time Conflicts

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 February 2009

Roy D. Morrison II
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Extract

Through more than forty years of his career, Paul Tillich painstakingly developed a vision of an ontological conflict between space and time. In developing this vision, Tillich proceeds from an existential and phenomenological perspective. An entire doctrine of reality is presupposed and time is conceived of as temporality and is ontologically identified with the primordial ‘depth’ or inner infinity of all being and reality. Such time is in some sense subjective, intuitively known, and immediately given.

Type
Research Article
Information
Scottish Journal of Theology , Volume 26 , Issue 3 , August 1973 , pp. 312 - 326
Copyright
Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 1973

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References

page 313 note 1 Heidegger, Martin, Being and Time (trans, by Macquarrie, and Robinson, , New York: Harper and Row, S.C.M. Press Ltd., 1962), p. H 18.Google Scholar

page 313 note 2 Tillich, Paul, Theobgy of Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, Galaxy, 1959), p. 99.Google Scholar

page 313 note 3 ibid., p. 30. This statement reflects Plato who includes rest and motion in the category of being … thereby attributing energy, substantiality and causality to them (Sophist, 248–50). His self-existent (Timacus 51) eternal Forms or Ideas were constituted of energy (Sophist 248) and were also causes (Aristotle, Metaphysics, Bk. I, ch. 6:987V, 19). However, Tillich does not accept Plato's ‘hypostatised’ dualism.

page 313 note 4 Speigelberg, Herbert, ThePhenomenological Movement (The Hague, Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff, 1960), vol. I, p. 297.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 314 note 1 Tillich, Paul, The Interpretation of History (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1936), p. 132.Google Scholar

page 314 note 2 Tillich, Paul, ‘The Struggle Between Time and Space’, Theology of Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, Galaxy, 1959), p. 31.Google Scholar

page 314 note 3 Tillich, , Theology of Culture, p. 128–30.Google Scholar

page 315 note 1 Tillich, , The Interpretation of History, p. 123.Google Scholar

page 316 note 1 Tillich, Paul, Das System der Wissenchaflen (Göttingen, Germany: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1923), pp. 19, 23, 76–8.Google Scholar

page 316 note 2 ibid., p. 19, 23. Here (1923) thinking and being are contrasted. In The Interpretation of History (1926), he identifies them (p. 60). In the Systematic Theology, thinking is identified with the logos—which is objective reason and is also the structure of reality which resides in immanent Being. Within Tillich's system these developments do not necessarily constitute a contradiction since Being is never hypostatised or known in itself and since space and time, being and thinking are all resolved in the coincidence of opposites—in the triadic unity of the ground and abyss of Being-reality.

page 317 note 1 Tillich, Paul, Systematic Theology (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, vol. I, 1951; vol. II, 1957; vol. III, 1963), (hereafter cited as ‘ST’), pp. 190, 193Google Scholar. See ST III, p. 164: ‘not causal but directive’. Respecting Kant, Tillich, in most contexts, does not technically resubstantise space and time. They are not ‘things’ (ST I, p. 190) but ‘forms’ with which the mind ‘grasps and shapes reality’ (ST I, p. 192). Hence, a notion such as infinity is viewed as a ‘directing concept, not a constituting concept’. Infinity is a ‘demand not a thing’ (ST I, p. 190f). However, space and time are also granted the constitutive power to unite ‘being with nonbeing, anxiety with courage’ (ST I, p. 194). Again, when the ‘infinite’ is employed substantively as a synonym for the Unconditioned (ST II, p. 10; ST I, pp. 206, 263; ST III, p. 114) then its semantic and conceptual spectrum embraces a constitutive and regulative role. In any case, the treatment of space and time as ‘powers’ seems to imply, at least metaphorically, some kind of substantiality or partial hypostasis.

page 317 note 2 ibid., I, pp. 79, 194.

page 318 note 1 ibid., I, pp. 257, 195. Cf. ST III, p. 420.

page 319 note 1 Tillich, , The Interpretation of History, p. 129. Cf. 147, 150.Google Scholar

page 319 note 2 Tillich, ST, III, pp. 315, 339, 369f.

page 319 note 3 ibid., p. 350.

page 319 note 4 Löwith, Karl, Meaning in History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, Phoenix, 1949), p. 19.Google Scholar

page 320 note 1 Tillich, ST III, p. 355.

page 320 note 2 Voeglin, Eric, The New Science of Politics (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1952), pp. 110–13Google Scholar; cf. 145, 154f, 178. ‘… the function of Gnosticism as the civil theology of Western society …’ (p. 178). See Tillich, Paul, The Future of Religions (New York: Harper and Row, 1966), p. 67Google Scholar: ‘It became the religious basis deep-rooted in every Western man.’

page 320 note 3 ibid., pp. 121f; cf. pp. 168f, 172.

page 321 note 1 Tillich, ST III, pp. 352–6, 338. Cf. The Future of Religions, pp. 77, 67.

page 321 note 2 ibid. pp. 300, 302.

page 322 note 1 Tillich, , Theology of Culture, pp. 31, 100.Google Scholar

page 322 note 2 Cochrane, Charles N., Christianity and Classical Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, Galaxy, 1957), p. 474.Google Scholar

page 322 note 3 Tillich, , The Interpretation of History, pp. 154, 161fGoogle Scholar; cf. ST III, p. 30, 32.

page 324 note 1 Tillich, , The Future of Religions, p. 87Google Scholar.

page 325 note 1 Tillich, ST III, p. 420; cf. p. 369f;

page 326 note 1 Tillich, , Theology of Culture, p. 130Google Scholar. Cf. Adams, James L., Paul Tillich's Philosophy of Culture, Science and Religion (New York: Harper and Row, 1965), p. 268f.Google Scholar