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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Is Tillich Studied or Considered a Relevant Anymore?
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Lietuvos Sv. Kazimieras
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# 11274
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Posted
I first read Tillich's The Courage to Be at the age of 14 in 1968. Since then I've read various essays, excerpts, etc, and listened to some of the few recorded Tillich interviews or lectures available on the internet. I have never tried to conquer Tillich's 3 volume Systematic Theology as a whole.
I never find anyone here or elsewhere who really seems to have a good knowledge of Tillich. How much is he now read or taught?
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Anglican_Brat
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# 12349
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Posted
The liberation critique of Tillich's concept of God is that by completely depersonalizing God, i.e. "the Ground of Being", Tillich thus robs Christian theology of its radical social justice implications.
If God can't feel/doesn't feel compassion for the marginalized, then Christianity doesn't have any good news for the marginalized.
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It's Reformation Day! Do your part to promote Christian unity and brotherly love and hug a schismatic.
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Lietuvos Sv. Kazimieras
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# 11274
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Posted
In that respect I must say that Tillich expressed my own ultimate theism more than my specific Christianity. Tillich, however, viewed a personal(ised) God - as "symbol" - as necessary to the individual experience of the divine. So I don't see that Tillich's theology diminishes the Gospel and essential Christian narrative in the faith life of thd believer. Or maybe I'm just a jumped up amateur who doesn't know his place ( with apologies to Morrissey).
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saysay
Ship's Praying Mantis
# 6645
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Lietuvos Sv. Kazimieras:
I never find anyone here or elsewhere who really seems to have a good knowledge of Tillich. How much is he now read or taught?
Pretty sure he was taught at UD in Modern European Intellectual History in the 90s.
Not that that means that anyone has/had a good knowledge of him; IIRC we were all pretty much just trying to keep our heads above the water in that class.
I read The Courage to Be but can't currently recall what was in it.
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Gee D
Shipmate
# 13815
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Posted
On the Paisley/Pannenberg thread, several have made comments along the line that the study of most academics' work is limited to their time. I think that Tillich falls into that category. While some of his propositions might inform the thoughts of others on a longer -term basis, his time has come and gone. Who now studies Marcuse?
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Not every Anglican in Sydney is Sydney Anglican
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Demas
Ship's Deserter
# 24
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Posted
Makes sense. The exceptions are where they become symbolic of some movement or other, in which case lots of people name drop them without ever reading them and their thoughts are reduced to a dot point caricature anyway. Maybe being forgotten is better...
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They did not appear very religious; that is, they were not melancholy; and I therefore suspected they had not much piety - Life of Rev John Murray
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Kaplan Corday
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# 16119
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Posted
Back in the first half of the twentieth century J. Gresham Machen asserted that liberal Protestantism was not a branch of Christianity, but a separate religion.
Pannenberg did not go quite that far, but he did give a hostage to fortune by predicting that liberal Christian theology would have disappeared before the end of the twenty-first century - I can't put my hand on the quote, which I think was in something by Alister McGrath.
Not a particularly daring or defined prophecy, of course, first because he wasn't going to be around if it failed, and secondly, because the meaning of terms such as liberal and conservative might well have changed drastically by the year 2100.
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Cottontail
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# 12234
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Posted
Tillich is your classic existentialist theologian of the mid-20th century. I was at a lecture once by Jurgen Moltmann, who asked where all the existentialists had gone? His own answer was that in 1968, they all became Marxists overnight! (which fits with Anglican_Brat's point about liberation theology.)
He also has a very bad reputation when it comes to women, not just in terms of being a serial philanderer (not good for a Christian theologian), but for pursuing his female students in a way that would be considered abusive nowadays. This doesn't necessarily invalidate his work, but it doesn't help with his modern reception.
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"I don't think you ought to read so much theology," said Lord Peter. "It has a brutalizing influence."
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que sais-je
Shipmate
# 17185
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Posted
I read "The Courage to Be" a bit later than Lietuvos Sv. Kazimieras.
I was - and remain - an atheist but Tillich came closer than anyone else to shaking my foundations. Which is probably why I've still got the (now tatty) paperback I bought for 8/- in 1975.
For the benefit of younger persons, 8/- was a way of writing 8 shillings (40p) in the old days.
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"controversies, disputes, and argumentations, both in philosophy and in divinity, if they meet with discreet and peaceable natures, do not infringe the laws of charity" (Thomas Browne)
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Enoch
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# 14322
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Cottontail:
... He also has a very bad reputation when it comes to women, not just in terms of being a serial philanderer (not good for a Christian theologian), but for pursuing his female students in a way that would be considered abusive nowadays. This doesn't necessarily invalidate his work, ...
Not sure about that. I think in the case of a theologian, it probably does.
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Brexit wrexit - Sir Graham Watson
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Evensong
Shipmate
# 14696
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Lietuvos Sv. Kazimieras:
I first read Tillich's The Courage to Be at the age of 14 in 1968. Since then I've read various essays, excerpts, etc, and listened to some of the few recorded Tillich interviews or lectures available on the internet. I have never tried to conquer Tillich's 3 volume Systematic Theology as a whole.
I never find anyone here or elsewhere who really seems to have a good knowledge of Tillich. How much is he now read or taught?
I think in my Bachelor of Theology he was taught once or twice in systematic theology units.
But I read a quote of his in Susan Howatch's fiction series on the C of E about 10 years ago and it transformed my life. It was the description of Grace:
"You are accepted".
The whole "ground of being" thing has also been instrumental for me. It changed the way I thought about God: from a top down model to a bottom up model. Perhaps a prelude to my like of Aquinas.
I've only just then looked up the context of the "You are accepted" quote.
What was interesting about it was that it matched the feeling of my mystical experience of Christ some five years before reading the words.
quote:
Moral progress may be a fruit of grace; but it is not grace itself, and it can even prevent us from receiving grace. For there is too often a graceless acceptance of Christian doctrines and a graceless battle against the structures of evil in our personalities. Such a graceless relation to God may lead us by necessity either to arrogance or to despair. It would be better to refuse God and the Christ and the Bible than to accept them without grace.
Here it is.
[quote edited to a reasonable length. The link contains the quote in its entirety]
[ 22. September 2014, 11:29: Message edited by: Eutychus ]
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a theological scrapbook
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Lietuvos Sv. Kazimieras
Shipmate
# 11274
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
But I read a quote of his in Susan Howatch's fiction series on the C of E about 10 years ago and it transformed my life. It was the description of Grace:
"You are accepted".
I've only just then looked up the context of the "You are accepted" quote.
What was interesting about it was that it matched the feeling of my mystical experience of Christ some five years before reading the words.
quote:
Moral progress may be a fruit of grace; but it is not grace itself, and it can even prevent us from receiving grace. For there is too often a graceless acceptance of Christian doctrines and a graceless battle against the structures of evil in our personalities. Such a graceless relation to God may lead us by necessity either to arrogance or to despair. It would be better to refuse God and the Christ and the Bible than to accept them without grace.
Here it is.
[quote edited to a reasonable length. The link contains the quote in its entirety]
It also strikes me as very Lutheran, indeed very like Luther himself -- which would be fitting for Tillich.
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ExclamationMark
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# 14715
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Posted
Not taught at all in my systematic theology (1990's)
What I've read of him since seems to fly in the face of social justice. A theology lecturer once told us students (on matters of systematic theology): "Never trust a dead German to get it right"
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Byron
Shipmate
# 15532
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by ExclamationMark:
Not taught at all in my systematic theology (1990's)
What I've read of him since seems to fly in the face of social justice. A theology lecturer once told us students (on matters of systematic theology): "Never trust a dead German to get it right"
A'hem ...
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John D. Ward
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# 1378
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Posted
[tangent/]
quote:
Originally posted by que sais-je:
Which is probably why I've still got the (now tatty) paperback I bought for 8/- in 1975.
For the benefit of younger persons, 8/- was a way of writing 8 shillings (40p) in the old days.
Britain changed to decimal currency in 1971. If you had bought the book in 1975, you would have paid 40p for it.
i) If you did buy the book in 1975, and the cover price shown on the book was 8/-, it would have been a pre-1971 printing still in stock.
ii) Your memory about the year of purchase may be at fault.
iii) Is 1975 a typo for 1965?
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agingjb
Shipmate
# 16555
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Posted
I have a copy of "The Shaking of the Foundations" (the 1966 Pelican reprint for 3/6) on my shelves. Is it worth a reread?
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Refraction Villanelles
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Moo
Ship's tough old bird
# 107
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Posted
I heard Tillich speak in Germany in 1955, and it was a very strange experience.
I had been in Germany about three months when he came to speak. I could speak German well enough to get by, and I understood about three-quarters of what was said to me.
I don't remember anything Tillich said, but his German amazed me. It seemed to me that he was making a lot of grammatical mistakes, and he fumbled for words. Afterwards, I asked a German friend about the way he spoke. She told me that I spoke better German than he did!
He had left Germany less than twenty years before. How could he forget his native language?
Moo
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See you later, alligator.
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que sais-je
Shipmate
# 17185
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by John D. Ward:
i) If you did buy the book in 1975, and the cover price shown on the book was 8/-, it would have been a pre-1971 printing still in stock.
ii) Your memory about the year of purchase may be at fault.
iii) Is 1975 a typo for 1965?
iv) I bought it second hand.
It says "Sixth Impression, November 1970" and looking again it says (40p) after 8/-. But I definitely bought it in 1975. And I put horizontal bars through my 7s.)
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"controversies, disputes, and argumentations, both in philosophy and in divinity, if they meet with discreet and peaceable natures, do not infringe the laws of charity" (Thomas Browne)
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Sir Pellinore
Quester Emeritus
# 12163
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Posted
Interesting what people have had to say about Paul Tillich, both the influence of his writing on them (even if secondhand through Susan Howatch) and what he was like in real life. Re the latter, I think many theologians and clerics have feet of clay as far as relating with other people, sexually or otherwise, go. The late Donald Mackinnon used to conduct some supervisions (tutorials) at Cambridge crouching under a table. I guess he had a psychiatric problem. Very few people ("Ask not for whom the bell tolls...") are thoroughly integrated, mature and balanced. Theologians are, by definition, good at discussing theology. I guess anything else is a plus. Re being touched by Tillich or Tillich via Howatch: it happens. Without wishing to sound pompous, I think the Almighty can work through anything or anyone. I have little time for Howatch, but my wife (at least as bright as yours truly) does. Tastes differ.
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Well...
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Callan
Shipmate
# 525
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Posted
There is a good joke about Paul Tillich:
One morning the Pope was surprised to find the head of the CDF bursting into his apartments in a state of agitation. "Your Holiness, terrible news! They've found the body". The Pope spends the morning sounding out Cardinals and theologians and, eventually, one of them says: "Try ringing Paul Tillich. He won't be put out in the slightest". So the Pope rings Paul Tillich and explains the situation. There is an awful silence on the other end of the phone. Nervously the Pope asks. "Herr Tillich, are you still there, are you all right?"
"Yes, I'm here, but I'm simply aghast"
"Well yes, it's been a big shock for all of us".
"You mean to say that Jesus of Nazareth actually existed...
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How easy it would be to live in England, if only one did not love her. - G.K. Chesterton
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Cottontail
Shipmate
# 12234
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Sir Pellinore:
Interesting what people have had to say about Paul Tillich, both the influence of his writing on them (even if secondhand through Susan Howatch) and what he was like in real life. Re the latter, I think many theologians and clerics have feet of clay as far as relating with other people, sexually or otherwise, go. The late Donald Mackinnon used to conduct some supervisions (tutorials) at Cambridge crouching under a table. I guess he had a psychiatric problem. Very few people ("Ask not for whom the bell tolls...") are thoroughly integrated, mature and balanced. Theologians are, by definition, good at discussing theology. I guess anything else is a plus.
Donald Mackinnon's behaviour is bizarre, but not abusive. Plenty of people struggle to relate to others, but are not abusive. Some theologians have behaved badly, even in sexual terms (eg, Karl Barth's long affair with a woman other than his wife), but have not actually been abusive. I'll give the non-abusive ones a reasonably free pass on the 'feet of clay' defence, unless I see it clearly influencing their theology at some point. Hans Urs von Balthasar's very odd relationship with Adrienne von Speyr, for example, had a definite (and IMO unhealthy) influence on his theology of the Church.
The reason it matters is illustrated by the case of John Howard Yoder. He, of course, is famous for his theological thinking-through of pacifism and non-resistance to violence. Now that he has been exposed as a life-long sexual harasser of women, whose crimes were swept under the carpet by an establishment who wanted to maintain him as the Mennonite posterboy ... well, suddenly a theology of non-resistance becomes very suspect indeed when it is espoused by an abuser.
Tillich now - I don't know. I haven't read enough of him, or given it enough thought. But there could well be a connection between his abstract, non-embodied version of God, and his abuse of the female body. At least, there's enough that someone out there could do a thesis on that.
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"I don't think you ought to read so much theology," said Lord Peter. "It has a brutalizing influence."
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Honest Ron Bacardi
Shipmate
# 38
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by agingjb:
I have a copy of "The Shaking of the Foundations" (the 1966 Pelican reprint for 3/6) on my shelves. Is it worth a reread?
If you do re-read it, I'll be interested to hear what you make of it.
I recall my reaction being that it's an odd mixture of nails being whacked firmly on the head, and long, windy attempts to avoid something or other. I was told (by a genuine student of Tillich!) that the latter is often because he sometimes redefines words to suit himself, so you have to be very careful to work out if he means what you think he means. IIRC, both "transcendent" and "immanent" are redefined in his lexicon.
(Yeah, Gildas, very funny!)
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Anglo-Cthulhic
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hatless
Shipmate
# 3365
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Posted
The Shaking of the Foundations is a collection of sermons, some very short, mainly preached at Union Theological Seminary. My copy is a first reprint of the British edition, from 1954 - not sure if I win anything for that.
I think his novel use of words is one of his chief interests today. Take the sermon The Depth of Existence (a long one) where he suggests that depth is a better word than height to talk about God.
The Yoke of Religion has been influential on me. 'It would not be worthwhile to teach Christianity, if it were for the sake of Christianity .. We call Jesus the Christ not because he brought a new religion, but because he is the end of religion, above religion and irreligion, above Christianity and non-Christianity.'
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My crazy theology in novel form
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agingjb
Shipmate
# 16555
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Posted
Thanks. I'll look at some of the sermons; whether I'll have anything useful to comment is uncertain.
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Refraction Villanelles
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leo
Shipmate
# 1458
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
The Shaking of the Foundations is a collection of sermons, some very short, mainly preached at Union Theological Seminary. My copy is a first reprint of the British edition, from 1954 - not sure if I win anything for that.
I think his novel use of words is one of his chief interests today. Take the sermon The Depth of Existence (a long one) where he suggests that depth is a better word than height to talk about God.
The Yoke of Religion has been influential on me. 'It would not be worthwhile to teach Christianity, if it were for the sake of Christianity .. We call Jesus the Christ not because he brought a new religion, but because he is the end of religion, above religion and irreligion, above Christianity and non-Christianity.'
I suspect that most people have encountered his ideas via John A T Robinson's work,especially his 'Honest to god'.
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Dark Knight
Super Zero
# 9415
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
quote:
Originally posted by Cottontail:
... He also has a very bad reputation when it comes to women, not just in terms of being a serial philanderer (not good for a Christian theologian), but for pursuing his female students in a way that would be considered abusive nowadays. This doesn't necessarily invalidate his work, ...
Not sure about that. I think in the case of a theologian, it probably does.
Someone better let the Karl Barth brigade know, then, as he was effectively in an open marriage with his wife and his live-in secretary for most of his adult life.
Of course it doesn't invalidate the work. For either Tillich or Barth.
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So don't ever call me lucky
You don't know what I done, what it was, who I lost, or what it cost me - A B Original: I C U
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Dark Knight
Super Zero
# 9415
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Posted
I must admit I've never read Courage to Be. I have however absorbed the equally famous and influential book Dynamics of Faith, which is an excellent defence of faith written for intelligent skeptics. Much like the great Schleiermacher, the father of modern theology, Tillich's work was largely apologetic and aimed at the intelligent critics of his time.
He featured in a couple of chapters in my recent book. But I don't think he is taught enough around these parts. Very modern for these ostensibly "postmodern" (whatever the fuck that means) times.
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So don't ever call me lucky
You don't know what I done, what it was, who I lost, or what it cost me - A B Original: I C U
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Love is as strong as death (Song of Solomon 8:6).
Posts: 2958 | From: Beyond the Yellow Brick Road | Registered: Apr 2005
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Dark Knight
Super Zero
# 9415
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Cottontail:
He also has a very bad reputation when it comes to women, not just in terms of being a serial philanderer (not good for a Christian theologian), but for pursuing his female students in a way that would be considered abusive nowadays.
I suppose you have some evidence to support your claim that he would be regarded as abusive today? Can you point me to it, please?
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So don't ever call me lucky
You don't know what I done, what it was, who I lost, or what it cost me - A B Original: I C U
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Love is as strong as death (Song of Solomon 8:6).
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Cottontail
Shipmate
# 12234
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Dark Knight:
quote:
Originally posted by Cottontail:
He also has a very bad reputation when it comes to women, not just in terms of being a serial philanderer (not good for a Christian theologian), but for pursuing his female students in a way that would be considered abusive nowadays.
I suppose you have some evidence to support your claim that he would be regarded as abusive today? Can you point me to it, please?
Here. It cites a 1998 article, which also cites a 1985 biography of Reinhold Niebuhr - see the end of the article.
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"I don't think you ought to read so much theology," said Lord Peter. "It has a brutalizing influence."
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Enoch
Shipmate
# 14322
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Dark Knight:
Someone better let the Karl Barth brigade know, then, as he was effectively in an open marriage with his wife and his live-in secretary for most of his adult life.
Of course it doesn't invalidate the work. For either Tillich or Barth.
I've not heard that.
If it doesn't call into question the work of an eminent theologian, why should it matter when tele-evangelists and the like do that sort of thing?
Or are we saying that as with so called 'great artists', if you are an intellectual, you are let off ethical consistency.
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Fr Weber
Shipmate
# 13472
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Posted
Modernism : Rationalism is better than old myth-derived narratives as a way of understanding and engaging the world.
Post-modernism : Rationalism is just another narrative.
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"The Eucharist is not a play, and you're not Jesus."
--Sr Theresa Koernke, IHM
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Sir Pellinore
Quester Emeritus
# 12163
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Cottontail:
...Donald Mackinnon's behaviour is bizarre, but not abusive. Plenty of people struggle to relate to others, but are not abusive. Some theologians have behaved badly, even in sexual terms (eg, Karl Barth's long affair with a woman other than his wife), but have not actually been abusive. I'll give the non-abusive ones a reasonably free pass on the 'feet of clay' defence, unless I see it clearly influencing their theology at some point...
The reason it matters is illustrated by the case of John Howard Yoder. He, of course, is famous for his theological thinking-through of pacifism and non-resistance to violence. Now that he has been exposed as a life-long sexual harasser of women, whose crimes were swept under the carpet by an establishment who wanted to maintain him as the Mennonite posterboy ... well, suddenly a theology of non-resistance becomes very suspect indeed when it is espoused by an abuser...
[/QB]
You make a valid point, especially when dealing with the bizarre dichotomy of Yoder's preaching versus practice. Donald Mackinnon was the mildest of men, and, as far as I am aware, had no dark hidden Shadow side. My point is that theologians (like clerics, which most of them are) are very good at preaching but that preaching often doesn't translate into life. Hence, I think, Kierkegaard's dictum that the theologian was the Antichrist. I think there is a lot in that. To go right outside the square for the moment, though I think it is relevant, Christ to me was not, like Tillich merely a brilliant theoretician. He was also a fully integrated, fully functional person who was prepared to sacrifice his life for what he believed in. Few theologians have. Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the late Bayers Naude (not murdered but had his life and career severely curtailed under apartheid) were obvious exceptions.Another, slightly off track, comment: I think many (not all by any means) clergy today are not mature, fully integrated people and I think much of their thinking is secondhand. I think an academic, merely academic, interest in theology and discussing it with fellow aficionados or one's spiritual groupies can be an attempt, subconscious or conscious, to escape from the painful process of self-discovery and transformation which Jesus was on about. Reading someone like Tillich can be the beginning of the journey. It is definitely not the end.
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Well...
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Demas
Ship's Deserter
# 24
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Moo:
I heard Tillich speak in Germany in 1955, and it was a very strange experience.
I had been in Germany about three months when he came to speak. I could speak German well enough to get by, and I understood about three-quarters of what was said to me.
I don't remember anything Tillich said, but his German amazed me. It seemed to me that he was making a lot of grammatical mistakes, and he fumbled for words. Afterwards, I asked a German friend about the way he spoke. She told me that I spoke better German than he did!
He had left Germany less than twenty years before. How could he forget his native language?
Moo
That's interesting. Tillich himself commented on language in his post-War lectures in Germany in the late 40s in "Beyond Religious Socialism":
quote:
The English language has worked on me what my German friends and former students considered a miracle: it has made me understandable. No Anglicisms occurred in the innumerable speeches I delivered, but the spirit of the English language dominated every sentence—the spirit of clarity, soberness and concreteness. This forced itself upon me, often against my natural inclinations. It taught me to avoid the accumulation of substantives to which German is prone and to use verbs instead. It forbade the ambiguities in which, because of its origin in medieval mystical literature, German philosophical language so often indulges. It prohibited the use of logically unsharp or incomplete propositions. It pricked my conscience when I dwelt too long in abstractions. All this was very well received by my German audiences and was felt as my most impressive change of mind.
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They did not appear very religious; that is, they were not melancholy; and I therefore suspected they had not much piety - Life of Rev John Murray
Posts: 1894 | From: Thessalonica | Registered: May 2004
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Demas
Ship's Deserter
# 24
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Dark Knight:
Of course it doesn't invalidate the work. For either Tillich or Barth.
Maybe. There is something which was commonly considered private about sexual matters - still is, although we are thankfully much more concerned about issues of consent than in the past. But I'm wary of going too far in separating theology from action. Surely for example George Whitefield's theology is made suspect by his open advocacy for introducing slavery to Georgia and his subsequent purchase of slaves.
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They did not appear very religious; that is, they were not melancholy; and I therefore suspected they had not much piety - Life of Rev John Murray
Posts: 1894 | From: Thessalonica | Registered: May 2004
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Dark Knight
Super Zero
# 9415
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Cottontail:
Here. It cites a 1998 article, which also cites a 1985 biography of Reinhold Niebuhr - see the end of the article.
Thank you. From that footnote, I agree that constitutes one instance of what sounds like sexual harassment. To call it "abuse," as the blogger implies, is to draw a very long bow. We would need to know a lot more about what happened in that room to make that call.
The reason I would call it harassment is because of the power relationship involved. Which is what was wrong with Barth's relationship with Charlotte von Kirschbaum, who lived with him and his wife, but was also an employee, hence in a power relationship. Again, I wouldn't call that "abuse," but I don't see why he should get a free pass.
I found fascinating Fessenden's thesis that Tillich's sexual history and his theology converged. I think that is almost certainly true, and would have been interested to hear more. I was a silly 16 year old in 1993, but I would be interested in a study that pursued that now.
quote:
quote:
Originally posted by Dark Knight:
Someone better let the Karl Barth brigade know, then, as he was effectively in an open marriage with his wife and his live-in secretary for most of his adult life.
Of course it doesn't invalidate the work. For either Tillich or Barth.
I've not heard that.
If it doesn't call into question the work of an eminent theologian, why should it matter when tele-evangelists and the like do that sort of thing?
Or are we saying that as with so called 'great artists', if you are an intellectual, you are let off ethical consistency.
No, and that's nonsense. I didn't say anything of the sort.
You are conflating a few ideas here. People like Jimmy Swaggart of Ted Haggart are not simply invalidated because of their sexual indiscretions, but because of rank hypocrisy. In both cases, they were on record as saying the exact behaviour they were engaging in was immoral. In Swaggart's case, he was loudly criticising it in others, namely that other Jimmy guy ... I want to say Bakker? Is that right?
Had Tillich been an ethicist (like John Howard Yoder - I found that interesting and troubling) who publicly stated that sexual immorality was wrong, that might be another discussion.
Rather than an artist, a better example at the end of your post would be a scientist who came up with a vaccine. Would her or his work be invalidated by her or his sex life? Of course not.
Was MLK's work and legacy tarnished by his legendary philandering? I would say categorically no.
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So don't ever call me lucky
You don't know what I done, what it was, who I lost, or what it cost me - A B Original: I C U
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Love is as strong as death (Song of Solomon 8:6).
Posts: 2958 | From: Beyond the Yellow Brick Road | Registered: Apr 2005
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Dark Knight
Super Zero
# 9415
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Byron:
quote:
Originally posted by ExclamationMark:
Not taught at all in my systematic theology (1990's)
What I've read of him since seems to fly in the face of social justice. A theology lecturer once told us students (on matters of systematic theology): "Never trust a dead German to get it right"
A'hem ...
Indeed. Tillich was no Bonhoeffer (no one was Bonhoeffer), but he was one of the first to object to Nazism, and lost his position for it. Had he not left for the US at Reinhold Niehbuhr's invitation, he would probably have been executed.
EM, either your lecturer was being ironic, or he or she was probably an idiot. That is one of the dumbest statements I have ever heard. ![[Disappointed]](graemlins/disappointed.gif)
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So don't ever call me lucky
You don't know what I done, what it was, who I lost, or what it cost me - A B Original: I C U
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Love is as strong as death (Song of Solomon 8:6).
Posts: 2958 | From: Beyond the Yellow Brick Road | Registered: Apr 2005
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Byron
Shipmate
# 15532
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Dark Knight:
[...] People like Jimmy Swaggart of Ted Haggart are not simply invalidated because of their sexual indiscretions, but because of rank hypocrisy. [...]
Exactly. There's a world of difference between using "indiscretions" to attack someone's personal credibility, and using them to attack their ideas.
The latter's a straight-up ad hom. If Tillich were a homicidal lunatic who numbered amongst his hobbies the axe-murder of his students while he bellowed Wagner, you'd have grounds to complain to the Union tenure board, but it'd do nothing to invalidate his ideas.
Televangalists getting caught with their pants down isn't used to undermine their teaching (as their hackwork's just Elmer Gantry sans irony, why bother) but to undermine them.
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Enoch
Shipmate
# 14322
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Dark Knight:
... Was MLK's work and legacy tarnished by his legendary philandering? I would say categorically no.
I would say categorically yes.
Going back to Tillich, I really can't see much difference between what is described of him and the various tele-evangelists that have come a cropper. It's also nonsense to say that somehow one lets Tillich off the accusation of hypocrisy because he was a theologian rather than a preacher. He occupied a place in public debate as a Christian figure.
There is a huge difference between a story like that of Stanley Hauwerwas who wrestled with a terrible situation that was largely of his first wife's making, and groping or attempting to grope female students.
If that sort of thing isn't regarded as acceptable for a disc jockey, it is less so for, of all people, a theologian.
I can't see any way of getting round this obvious point. If you are in the public space as a Christian figure, you owe it to God, your spouse, yourself and those who look up to you to keep your ding-a-long or its female equivalent where it belongs. If you don't, can't or don't think it matters, it reduces dramatically any claim you have to be listened to or taken seriously.
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Brexit wrexit - Sir Graham Watson
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Byron
Shipmate
# 15532
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Posted
Yeah, sure, Tillich was a horndog who should've muzzled his sturm und drang. Thing is, he wasn't a leader, he was an academic; it's his ideas, not him personally, that carried weight. It's different in kind.
If he was, say, screwing around as a Lutheran pastor, he'd be as bad as the homophobic televangelists caught hoovering coke off rent-boys. But he wasn't in that position, so it's irrelevant.
If you can find anything worth hearing from Haggard et al, same goes for their pearls of wisdom.
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Dark Knight
Super Zero
# 9415
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Posted
What Byron said.
And as I said, Haggard and Swaggart did exactly what they preached against. That's the hypocrisy. It's not at all the same with Tillich.
And I'd like to hear more from Enoch on how MLK's legacy is tarnished.
[ 24. September 2014, 09:29: Message edited by: Dark Knight ]
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So don't ever call me lucky
You don't know what I done, what it was, who I lost, or what it cost me - A B Original: I C U
----
Love is as strong as death (Song of Solomon 8:6).
Posts: 2958 | From: Beyond the Yellow Brick Road | Registered: Apr 2005
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Byron
Shipmate
# 15532
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Posted
MLK would only be a hypocrite if he funded segregation on the Q.T., which is (pause for the most heroic of understatements) not especially likely. ![[Devil]](graemlins/devil.gif)
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Cottontail
Shipmate
# 12234
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Dark Knight:
quote:
Originally posted by Cottontail:
Here. It cites a 1998 article, which also cites a 1985 biography of Reinhold Niebuhr - see the end of the article.
Thank you. From that footnote, I agree that constitutes one instance of what sounds like sexual harassment. To call it "abuse," as the blogger implies, is to draw a very long bow. We would need to know a lot more about what happened in that room to make that call.
The reason I would call it harassment is because of the power relationship involved. Which is what was wrong with Barth's relationship with Charlotte von Kirschbaum, who lived with him and his wife, but was also an employee, hence in a power relationship. Again, I wouldn't call that "abuse," but I don't see why he should get a free pass.
I would call it Tillich's treatment of that student 'abuse'; you would call it 'sexual harassment'. Frankly, I would call all sexual harassment abuse, and because these were his students, the power dynamic is very pronounced. But we may be using different terms for the same thing here. Charlotte von Kirschbaum, by contrast, was a grown woman, part of the same circle of friends, and Barth's intellectual peer. Their affair was morally wrong, but I don't think anyone has ever suggested it was anything but fully consensual. This account gives you more detail.
So yes, with Tillich, that was just one incident, but you asked for evidence, and I provided it. Realistically, you are not going to find much written evidence from pre-1965. It never came to a formal complaint that I know of, and it never came to court. How could it? Sexual harassment/abuse of women was not taken seriously then. Yoder's victims first came forward in the 1990s, and the thing was swept under the carpet even then. And note that Niebuhr's biographer in the 1980s describes Tillich's promiscuity as 'exuberant' - a positive word - so that this instance with the female student is given simply and uncritically as an example of this 'exhuberance'. If anything, the anecdote - brief though it is - might be read to imply that Niebuhr is a dry old stick for objecting to Tillich's treatment of the student. And despite Niebuhr's disgust at Tillich, he does not seem to have made any report. This incident is related as a spat between two powerful men, and the victim remains unknown.
Moreover, even if they did object to his treatment of them, Tillich's students would have had no recourse. Did you know that Harvard University, the University of Chicago, and Union Theological Seminary are all private institutions? This means that students even now do not enjoy the protection or rights that students in the UK do. For a dissertation or thesis, for example, they may have only one supervisor. And if that supervisor fails them, they have no right of appeal. This was the case at the American institution I attended for a time. While that institution was generally benevolent, it was known that a student's career could be ruined by a simple personality clash.
We know that Tillich pursued his female students. What we don't know is whether they all enjoyed it or not. How would we know? No one ever asked them. It may well be that many of his students enjoyed his attentions and responded to them (although that is also a very convenient narrative for Tillich and his protectors to tell themselves). But even if this is the case, this does not excuse Tillich, and I would still call it abuse. I have also been a university lecturer, and to have created a sexually-charged atmosphere in my classes and to pursue any of my students as he did would have been a disgusting and abusive act on my part. Yes, I am judging him by the standards of today. But that was my original point.
So I am sorry if you don't find that one instance compelling. I do. I think that even one instance is one too many, and most probably was not an isolated instance, because these things rarely are. The rest of the data is anecdotal, but I have moved enough in these circles to have heard it as accepted knowledge, as in the blogger's account of being told this in class by her professor.
For further back-up, you may also want to check the footnote (footnote!) here.
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"I don't think you ought to read so much theology," said Lord Peter. "It has a brutalizing influence."
Posts: 2377 | From: Scotland | Registered: Jan 2007
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Dark Knight
Super Zero
# 9415
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Posted
We can certainly argue the toss about the semantics of the word "abuse," - I am using it in a more forensic sense I think - and I'm not about to countenance arguments from silence as to how many people Tillich "might have" harassed, but I've already conceded it was harassment. So you can bypass the "if you don't find this compelling, I do" line, I think.
No one was Barth's intellectual peer. And my point is not that von Kirscshbaum was consenting or not, but that a power relationship existed which privileged Barth. She was his secretary. Just as with Tillich, he took advantage of his powerful position in regard to his student.
I'm not really all that interested in this, as I think Tillich's intellectual legacy is far larger than this (Barth's too). The dream of Tillich and his theology of culture was to draw a theology which not only prophesied to culture, but was drawn from culture. It would be the ultimate apologetic theology - religion is not something apart from culture, but culture can be the raw material of theology itself (and not only reflection on culture). In DofF he tries this by defining faith as "that which is of ultimate concern", thus casting it in language that are relatable to those outside religion. Concerns which are not ultimate - by which Tillich means transcending life itself, so bigger than this life or even this world (he was Neo-Platonist after all) - he could critique as being unworthy of faith. He specifically critiques nationalism in this regard, as a form of concern which is transient and not ultimate. One can imagine him doing this with scientism also.
I think his theology of culture fails in the end, which he seems to have conceded. But it was a worthy attempt.
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So don't ever call me lucky
You don't know what I done, what it was, who I lost, or what it cost me - A B Original: I C U
----
Love is as strong as death (Song of Solomon 8:6).
Posts: 2958 | From: Beyond the Yellow Brick Road | Registered: Apr 2005
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Enoch
Shipmate
# 14322
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Dark Knight:
... And I'd like to hear more from Enoch on how MLK's legacy is tarnished.
In much the same way as John F Kennedy's is by his well known philanderings, and his brother's is by what happened on July 18th 1969, and they weren't even ministers of religion.
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Brexit wrexit - Sir Graham Watson
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Cottontail
Shipmate
# 12234
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Dark Knight:
We can certainly argue the toss about the semantics of the word "abuse," - I am using it in a more forensic sense I think - and I'm not about to countenance arguments from silence as to how many people Tillich "might have" harassed, but I've already conceded it was harassment. So you can bypass the "if you don't find this compelling, I do" line, I think.
No one was Barth's intellectual peer. And my point is not that von Kirscshbaum was consenting or not, but that a power relationship existed which privileged Barth. She was his secretary. Just as with Tillich, he took advantage of his powerful position in regard to his student.
I'm not really all that interested in this, as I think Tillich's intellectual legacy is far larger than this (Barth's too).
I'm not disputing Tillich's intellectual legacy. He was a big-hitter, and anyone writing about mid-20th century Protestant theology has to deal with him. I did myself. But as with Yoder, if one is to appreciate the whole of a person's intellectual legacy, then one has to factor in what is known about their wider life. Same with Barth. Because as I argued above, that can affect how they are read, perhaps particularly in the area of theology and ethics.
I appreciate your concession that the incident with the student was harassment. I would also appreciate a concession that Tillich pursued his female students, and that this was an abuse of them and of his position. I would be content to leave it there.
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"I don't think you ought to read so much theology," said Lord Peter. "It has a brutalizing influence."
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Dark Knight
Super Zero
# 9415
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Posted
I'm not conceding what you haven't demonstrated. And I'm not about to agree to broadening the semantic range of "abuse" to the point where it is meaningless as a concept. Do with that as you must.
To return to the topic, I would think Tillich as an apologetic theologian could be useful in a time when people are fond of the "spiritual/religious" dichotomy. People are fond of declaring themselves opposed to religion, while being very spiritual. Tillich can show us that wherever there is ultimate concern, there is faith, and there is religion. Faith and religion are not confined within the church, they are not what people think they are. Those who have a passion for spirituality can find in the church a resource, as barriers break down.
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So don't ever call me lucky
You don't know what I done, what it was, who I lost, or what it cost me - A B Original: I C U
----
Love is as strong as death (Song of Solomon 8:6).
Posts: 2958 | From: Beyond the Yellow Brick Road | Registered: Apr 2005
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Charles Read
Shipmate
# 3963
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Posted
The OP asked if Tillich is in favour or not today.
I included Tillich in a course I taught between 1994 and 1999 at a UK Pentecostal seminary. I really only discovered Tillich by teaching that course! (It was on 20th century theology.)
Now I refer to Tillich in both liturgy and doctrine classes - his work on symbols is still intellectually stimulating and has practical import for worship - not least maybe Fresh Expressions.
His adage 'Just accept you are accepted' is a good summary of the doctrine of assurance.
I now regret not taking David Pailin's first year module at Manchester (Where I did my undergraduate theology) because I know he included a fair bit of stuff an Tillich (that was in 1978).
I'm currently reading Tillich's systematic theology vol. 2 and finding it insightful and provokes me to thought. I don't agree with everything Tillich wrote but then I don't agree with I write either - that is not the point.
I would welcome a new interest in Tillich's thought - and since I'd self-describe as a charismatic evangelical Anglican, some might find that unexpected!
But the issues raised here arising from his harassing of students, philandering etc. are also important. More on that maybe later...
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"I am a sinful human being - why do you expect me to be consistent?" George Bebawi
"This is just unfocussed wittering." Ian McIntosh
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