Tillich’s Doctrine of Revelation

Paul Tillich’s doctrine of revelation must be treated in relation to his doctrine of God. Tillich’s God is not a supernatural God who existed before nature was, and who exists as its lawgiver; rather, the term “God” designates what concerns man ultimately (Systematic Theology, Vol. I, p. 211; except where otherwise indicated, page references refer to this volume).

Judged from the standpoint of traditional theism, Tillich is an atheist. “God is being itself, not a being” (p. 237). All statements with respect to God, other than that he is being-itself, are symbolic (p. 239). And the truth of a symbol is independent of our own experience, whether physical, psychological, or historical (p. 240).

The Art Of Symbol

Being-itself (God) can be spoken of symbolically as living (p. 241). But to say God is a “ ‘personal God’ does not mean that God is a person. It means that God is the ground of everything personal.… Ordinary theism has made God a heavenly, completely perfect person who resides above the world and mankind. The protest of atheism against such a highest person is correct” (p. 245). Indeed, it is not even possible to ask whether God exists. For being itself is above existence (p. 237).

According to Tillich, man speaks of his ultimate concern in terms of his own being (p. 243). To speak of God as loving, omnipotent, omniscient, and as the Creator, as the Bible does, is to speak symbolically (pp. 272 f.). Creation and the Fall, described in the Word of God, do not refer to events, but rather are descriptions of the relation between God and the world (pp. 252 f.).

All such Christian symbols answer existential questions. God’s “word” is not limited to or identical with the Bible (p. 4). The concepts of theology are rooted in a direct experience of something ultimate in value. Experience is an inexhaustible source out of which new truths are continually taken. Thus, the theologian ought to be open to experience which might go beyond Christian experience. “He is not bound to a circle the center of which is the event of Jesus as the Christ” (p. 45). Every person and thing participates in being-itself, and is therefore a possible revelatory medium.

Dimension Of Mystery

Revelation discloses the ground of being, the true being behind things (p. 94). It is the manifestation of something hidden, a dimension of mystery which remains a mystery even in its disclosure (p. 110).

Apart from man’s reception of revelation as one’s ultimate concern there is no revelation. In revelation the mind goes beyond itself in ecstasy. Ecstasy includes an element of inspiration. But inspiration does not mediate otherwise unknown facts; it opens a “new dimension of understanding” in relation to our ultimate concern and the mystery of being (p. 114).

Revelation discloses mystery in miracle; it points to the mystery of being, expressing its relation to us (p. 117).

Revelation is the manifestation of the depth of reason and the ground of being. It points to the mystery of existence and to our ultimate concern. It is independent of what science and history say about the condition in which it appears … (p. 118).

Revelation does not convey “revealed words” (p. 123). The “Word of God” is a symbolic expression. Revelatory power is absent in propositions which give theoretical information about the past (p. 127).

The Role Of Jesus

Although the theologian is not bound to a circle, the center of which is Jesus as the Christ, Tillich appears to be inconsistent when he affirms that the permanent point of reference of all subsequent revelation is Jesus as the Christ. But the inconsistency is in appearance only. Tillich’s notion of final revelation is not dependent upon the Jesus revealed in the New Testament text. “Final revelation” has a speculative meaning for Tillich. For the original revelation has to be transformed and reinterpreted from time to time (p. 126). Jesus as the Christ, the New Being, is the final revelation.

The words of Jesus and the apostles point to this New Being; they make it visible through stories, legends, symbols, paradoxical descriptions, and theological interpretations. But none of these expressions of the experience of the final revelation is final and absolute in itself. They are all conditioned, relative, open to change and additions (p. 151).

The picture of Jesus as the Christ portrays a man who is the medium of final revelation. It discloses a person in complete possession of himself, because he is completely united with the ground of his being, and able to become transparent to the mystery he reveals. A revelation cannot be final unless it is able to negate itself without losing itself. Jesus is the “Son of God” because he met this criterion.

The symbol of the cross of Christ is superior to other religious symbols because Jesus sacrifices himself not to become “an idol,” another God besides God, a God into whom the disciples wanted to make him (The Christian Scholar, Vol. XXXVIII, No. 3, p. 197). Jesus accepted the title “Christ” on the condition that he would die; “that means to deny the idolatrous tendency even with respect to himself.” Jesus is not the Christ in the literal sense of existing eternally with the Father, as the pre-existent “Son of God.” In the second chapter of Philippians, verse 6, Paul speaks of Jesus Christ as being equal with God. And in Colossians 1:16, participation in the work of creation is ascribed to Christ: “For by him are all things created.… And he is before all things and by him all things consist” … (vss. 16, 17). For Tillich, such language can have symbolic, but not literal meaning. “Jesus became the Christ by conquering the demonic forces which tried to make him demonic by tempting him to claim the ultimacy for his finite nature” (p. 132).

The clash between Tillich’s philosophy and the historic Christian faith is especially clear in Christology. By refusing allegedly to be the Christ in the biblical sense, Jesus becomes the Christ in Tillich’s sense. We are liberated from the authority of everything “finite” in Jesus—his traditions, world view, and personal piety. Jesus is the New Creature only insofar as his historical existence is negated. He is “New Being” to the degree that he is not the old, i.e., not finite, not historical. He is the Christ because he refused to be the Christ of Chalcedon; i.e., by refusing to be equal with God, he became the Christ.

To view Jesus himself as final, as orthodoxy does, is asserted to be demonic and idolatrous.

Jesus is the religious and theological object as the Christ and only as the Christ. And he is the Christ as the one who sacrifices what is merely “Jesus” in him. The decisive trait in his picture is the continuous self-surrender of Jesus who is Jesus to Jesus who is the Christ (p. 134).

The symbol “Son of God” means that Jesus brought people to “that in him which is greater than he and they” (p. 136). The acceptance of the cross implies that as a finite being, Jesus refused to impose himself on other finite beings. As Jesus of Nazareth he sacrificed himself to Jesus the Christ, and thus became the final revelation. The final revelation is universally valid in that Jesus stood in uninterrupted unity with the ground of his being and continuously sacrificed himself as Jesus to himself as Christ.

Triumph Of Relativity

Tillich accuses orthodoxy of failing to make past truth relevant to the present situation (p. 3). The “eternal truth” at the foundation of the Christian message lacks any permanent meaning. It must be reinterpreted for every new generation. Tillich presupposes without evidence that all expressions of truth are historically relative and changing.

The Christian faith affirms that God has revealed himself to man in a way that is clear and final. Jesus Christ is the final revelation in the biblical sense because God was in him reconciling the world unto himself. Christ’s sacrificial death and atonement is not subject to changing situation, but it is the unique event in history, in terms of which the entire changing course of human events has significance and meaning.

This affirmation does not mean that orthodoxy elevates something finite and transitory to something infinite and of eternal validity. It recognizes that we now see through a glass darkly. Our knowledge of God is not exhaustive and complete. We know in part. We know what has been revealed to us by God. And such knowledge is sufficient for our salvation. Tillich begs the question to assume that the propositions of historical Christianity lack validity.

Tillich assumes that it is possible to identify “God” with being-itself. But the term “being” is an abstraction derived from experience. And as such it cannot go beyond experience.

If knowledge of God is known from an analysis of “being” then the term “God” is as abstract and nebulous as “being.” To define God by adding “in itself” to the word “being” is to engage in verbal manipulations, without any more significance than defining the term “Pig-tig” to be a cross between a male pig and a female tiger.

Tillich’s employment of language is speculative; it does not arrive at the discovery of any nonverbal state of affairs. A chair, a table, the square root of five, the moon, and Charlie’s great aunt do not share a common quality, in that they participate in “being.” The only thing they have in common is that they can be thought about and spoken of. “Being,” as Tillich uses the term, is a meaningless hypostatization of individual subjectivity. The God of Scripture is a personal being, aware of man, a loving Father, not a philosophical construction.

The question of God cannot be answered by an analysis of “being.” The living God is not the result of an abstract ontological analysis. But the Christian faith depends upon the acceptance of biblical revelation as its norm.

If the term “Christian theology” is appropriate as a description of Tillich’s theology, then a new term is needed to describe a theology based upon the biblical writings as an authoritative source.

Tillich’s God is not a supernatural God, it is a meaningless abstraction. And it is not clear how even being-itself can be a nonsymbolic description of God, when the notion of “being” is simply an abstraction. For why does Tillich speak of being-itself and not of becoming-itself?

To identify revelation with the Bible is for Tillich one of the most serious errors of theology (p. 157). In our opinion, Tillich is in error when he holds that revelation is never separable from the act of receiving. For the Word of God is the objective norm of our faith. It was objectively given by God to man.

Tillich does not wish to hold that revelation is simply a psychological state. But the “ground of being” is discovered in psychological experience. And from an analysis of psychological experience it is not possible to get beyond one’s own experience. The “ground of being” is nothing but a projection of experience. It cannot exist in the usual sense of “exist,” but only in the sense that it concerns us ultimately.

For Tillich a person is a possible bearer of revelation because he can participate in being-itself. But the term “participate” is vague, for it does not refer to any concrete state of affairs. No change occurs in our experience, if we deny that a person participates in being-itself.

It is important to remember that Tillich’s notion of a symbol presupposes the notion of “participation,” but “participation” is itself a poetic metaphor. Tillich assumes that different levels of reality presupppose a different approach. We can grant that language has different levels and uses. But this admission does not imply that there are dimensions of reality corresponding to the levels of language. To speak of a depth dimension of reality, opened by religious symbols, and to speak of the ultimate power of being, is merely a speculative verbalization, which in principle is incapable of being described in terms of sense experience.

The Christian faith is destroyed in Tillich’s system by making the attributes of God projections of our own experience. Language is admittedly inadequate to express the nature of God in any exhaustive sense, but this does not imply that God is completely unknown. Tillich’s position is a form of religious skepticism. God as he really is, is a mystery, even in revelation. In fact, the notion that God is a personal, living, conscious being, aware of man, is symbolic and is absurd for Tillich, if understood in a literal sense. God is forever hidden. But if this is the case, why speak of God at all? Why speak of God symbolically as a person? Why not speak of him in mathematical terms, such as X2?

Tillich’s attempt to remove revealed knowledge from the possible criticism of science and history would remove revelation from the field of intelligible discourse. However, God has revealed himself to man in human events, within history. The Bible is the record of God’s dealings with man. It tells man what he is to believe concerning God, and what duties God requires of man. The supposed conflict between science and religion is not resolved by banishing religion to a mystical realm.

It is not meaningful to speak of God unless something is known of God. The term “God” when used in the biblical writings refers to a God who has revealed himself to man in nature and in the course of human events. And the objective side of this revelation, history-as-event, occurred, according to the account, independently of the reception it received. God, if he is to be known at all, can only be known if such revelation has occurred. That such revelation has occurred can in the final analysis never be demonstrated. The existence of a revealed God is a matter of faith and commitment. It cannot be proven scientifically, for scientific proof is limited to an analysis of human experience, beyond which it cannot go.

The Christian faith accepts the biblical writings as the Word of God by an act of faith. Such an act of faith is, however, not irrational. For the Bible refers to objective states of affairs, not simply to subjective emotional states. It does not abolish logical thought but suggests that man, in all his functions, including his ability to think logically, is a creature of the living God. And as a created being, man is limited in his reasoning to an examination of a created universe, so that God can in principle be known only insofar as he has disclosed himself to man.

Either the Bible presents God’s redemptive dealings with men, or the Christian faith lacks meaning and is pious nonsense.

Speculative Criterion

Tillich’s criterion of a final revelation, that it be able to negate itself without losing itself, is purely speculative. For what criterion can be offered for the acceptance of Tillich’s criterion?

Tillich’s construction of Jesus as the Christ is presented on speculative grounds, not on the basis of exegesis of the New Testament. The latter is interpreted by Tillich in terms of a criterion which is imposed on the New Testament. Tillich’s claim that Jesus accepted the title “Christ,” on the condition that he would die and thus deny the idolatrous tendency with respect to himself, overlooks the Gospel account of the events surrounding the death of Christ. There is absolutely nothing in the text to suggest that at his trial Jesus negated his historical existence. And it was just his claim to be equal with God that brought about his execution.

One may deny the validity and truth of the claim Jesus made, but the New Testament clearly indicates he made it. To interpret the New Testament in terms of modern existentialism is an unscholarly distortion of an historical document. To make Jesus the perfect existentialist, a person in complete possession of himself, and transparent to the mystery of being, is to interpret the past in the light of the present. To apply existentialist categories to the past, in such a way that historical texts are distorted, is to forget that the categories of existentialism are of recent origin. Such a procedure, if not “demonic,” is at least uncritical.

Tillich’s view of Jesus as the Christ is the very opposite of that presented by the New Testament, and it is achieved by rejecting, by means of an a priori criterion, the authority of everything finite in Jesus. What such elements include is known only to Tillich! The New Testament makes no such distinction.

David H. Freeman is Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Rhode Island. He is editor of Essays on Modern Thinkers to be published in the Fall by the Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company.

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