Chaitanya Jyothi Museum Opening, 2000
RAMANAM
In the Name of The Father, and of The Son and of The Holy Spirit, Amen.
Countrymen,
ORBIS NON SUFFICIT
SOLUS DEUS SUFFICIT
He is describing the purpose of theology, and says “European theological orthodoxy,” comparable to American fundamentalism, which combines both “wrongs” of confusing the eternal truth with a current interpretation. What is the background of this “European theological orthodoxy?” I was not aware of fundamentalist-type movements before the surges in America. Also, could you quickly explain orthodoxy & neo-orthodoxy.
By European orthodoxy Tillich means primarily the Lutheran Church in Germany and the other Germanic countries (mainly Scandinavia) which was sponsored and supported by the governments of those countries. And because of this governmental support, these churches came to espouse patterns of thinking which tended to suggest that the way things are is the way God intends them and especially so because the church has the civil authority to enforce conformity of thought and action. When religious institutions are directly supported (financially) by governments, then they tend to tell folks that the governments are God in worldly dress and the status quo Divine throughout. This produces opportunity for mischief and is a major reason for the disestablishment clause in the US Constitution and Bill of Rights. It’s called a “separation” clause (of church and state) but it’s not really that. It’s a disestablishment clause. Religion is encouraged by our Founding Fathers but not as established by law, as in England then and still. Religious organizations here cannot feed off the public tax, although indirectly they do, actually.
He denotes Luther’s “rediscovery of the Pauline message.” What does this mean, in reference to Paul? I would guess this was an important part of the Reformation in re the Roman church? Also, what period was Barth, and what was his “rediscovery of the Christian Paradox?”
Luther’s exegesis of Paul’s Letter to the Romans precipitated the Lutheran arm of the Reformation. Calvin was the other arm, in Switzerland, from Southern France (both Templar areas), quite different from Luther but mutually supporting. In Tillich’s parlance and generally, the word Protestant means the Luthern aspect of the Reformation and the word Reformed means the Calvinist aspect of the Reformation.
The Reformation was just that, a Re-Formation of the One, Holy, Catholic Church on earth (“Militant”).
The Pauline message that Luther rediscovered is the passage from Habakkuk 2:4 that “the righteous shall live by faith.” The technical term for the issue here is “justification” (as compared with another technical term, “sanctification”). How is one justified before God, on what account can one stand before God without being annihilated by His Holiness and demand for Purity? This is a theoretical question but even more so an existential question — in the feelings, the gut, the central axis of the personality: God is perfect and Holy, I know I’m not. So how can I even hope to ever get ahead and near Him? Luther experienced this question with the most excruciating emotional pain, in the very depths of his being, as the saying goes. It was an existential question for him of the greatest moment.
The church said that one is justified by paying amounts of money or saying amounts of specific prayers and doing pilgrimages, etc. In other words, by external acts that the church sanctioned and controlled. Thus, in fact the church was saying that you could be justified only if the clergy let you — and who was to keep them from being arbitary or bilking people for money and goods. Essentially, shaking down (extorting) the population in the name of justification before God. This was going on in truly horrible ways.
Luther got from Paul’s Letter to the Romans that one is justified not by externals but by something internal, not by something someone else has to give or withhold but by something one has inside already, part of one’s inalienable (can’t be taken away) nature. That something is called faith, which is not subscribing to a set of beliefs but is, rather, participation in being itself, in the process we call life, but without attachment for the fruits of our participation. In this realm of participation in Being, in one’s own nature, one is justified or allowed to stand before God not because one is made holy or pure as He is but because one trusts Him as a child does a parent through participation in His life, which is Being. In other words, Pauline justification is an emotional movement towards the experience of non-duality by means of increasing experiences of non-duality. The engine of it is Grace, freely given. This is the key Pauline ingredient. One cannot be justified before God by anything one can do. Only freely-given or, technically, prevenient Grace can justify one before God and this occurs through the internal activity of faith or participation, which activity ITSELF is a product of prevenient Grace.
Luther discovered in Romans the key to relaxing and not getting brow-beat by the clergy. The key is understanding that the remedy is internal, not external, that we have it all along, within, as prevenient Grace allowing faith which may be described as envelopment in Grace for participation in the Divine Life.
This understanding of the truth regarding the phenomenon of justification is what broke the back of the RC church. This is one example of what Tillich calls “the Christian Paradox,” by which he means the principle in Christian Theology and history which continuously causes the unexpected to emerge.
Someone is going to come along and discover something, usually small, that wipes out the hegemony of full-court-press of any system that tries such a thing. There is always the unexpected. The unexpected is called, technically, a paradox. You will hear people using paradox to mean something which doesn’t make sense because it is contradictory. That is not what the word means. It means something unexpected, which is very different from nonsensical or contradictory.
Karl Barth was a Swiss Theologian of this Century who was a contemporary of Tillich’s and his principle foil. Tillich liked Barth, while disagreeing with him on many matters, and Barth did not care for Tillich.
Barth initiated the Neo-Orthodox movement in Europe that was carried by Niebuhr and Union here in the USA. Tillich is often called a Neo-Orthodox Theologian here because of his association with Union when it was Neo-Orthodox. But he was nothing of the sort. Tillich is a Franciscan Theologian, in the tradition of Bonaventure and going back to Augustine. Mystical Theologian would be a proper description of Tillich, as it is of this writer.
Barth appreciated the ability of the transcendent power of God — the unexpected — to enter into history and do something either novel or unprecedented, as suits its own omnipotent Will. This was an important point Barth made. He vigorously and successfully maintained the principle of the Christian Paradox, the breaking into the world of seeming stability of the transcendent creative energy, the Divine Principle, sometimes as principle and sometimes, as with Jesus (also Rama, Krishna, Sages), as personality. The point is the continuous possibility of the unexpected. This is an important principle to maintain. Folks want to forget it or ignore it in order to further petty agendas.
Saying “–strengthened all trends toward a theology of repristination in Europe–.” “Repristination” is not in my dictionary. Any thoughts?
Barth and others after WWI and especially after WWII wanted to get back to basics (fundamentalism in a guise). The question then was, what are the basics to get back to? (They did not take Tillich’s approach which was to go forward to basics.) They settled on certain dogmas and procedures and attitudes all of them tending to call the world as we know it unregenerately corrupt and the transcendence of God the key focus of religion. They despised mysticism — e.g., Tillich — as being fuzzy headed and denying the transcendence of God. And they became what we now think of as fundamentalists, folks who appear to talk religion but are usually just interested in business ventures or networking for business ventures. For these people, the language of religion becomes divorced from the phenomena of life and they end up in truly ludicrous situations, such as cutting business deals and gambling while claiming that the Holy Spirit is leading them to do these activities.
Some messages I found in the text:
Types: kerygmatic, apologetic, fundamentalist, orthodoxy, neo-orthodoxy, roman, humanistic, naturalistic. Fulfilling the theological function of the Church (which is not preaching or teaching) requires kerygmatic theology (seeking the eternal truth in all) to meld with apologetic theology (answering theology), thus overcoming kerygmatics’ arrogant exclusivity and relating its language to a contemporary situation. However, apologetics must be sure it continuously heeds the kerygma — the eternal truths. Tillich’s system is based on “correlation” in which he correlates the questions of the contemporary situation with the answers of the eternal truths and divine manifestations.
Excellent summary. And you need me? Yes, that word correlation is key to understanding Tillich’s methodology or way of doing theology. Today, the liberals have become all apologetics, disregarding the eternal truth, and the fundamentalists have become all kerygmatics (evangelicals as they call themselves), disregarding the facts of life around them. The liberals have become fanatical voluptuaries and the fundamentalists have become voluptuarial fanatics.
What keeps one from falling off on either of these sides is the constant attention to phenomena, to what is going on in the internal and the external realms. The issue of justification that Luther faced and resolved is directly on this all-important epistemological methodology of attending first, last and always to phenomena. Being being is the salvation of man. Participation is the key to happiness and welfare. More and more that participation is towards the internal realm, which correlates with the external realm but is more manageable.
AUM NAMAH SHIVAYA
