What is so valuable about this book is its power to clarify and organize the various issues surrounding the spiritual experience. Here are some of Tillich's ideas:
Faith as Ultimate Concern. Faith is the centered movement of the whole personality toward our ultimate concern, which is God. That concern alone gives life ultimate meaning and significance.
God. God is not a being, acting in time and space, dwelling in a special place, affecting the course of events and being affected by them like any other being in the universe. Such literalism deprives God of ultimacy. It draws him down to the level of the finite and conditional. There are two elements in the notion of God:
1. Our personal experience of the holy, an awareness of the presence of the divine.
2. The acceptance of the symbols. All the qualities we attribute to God--such as power, love, justice--are symbols taken from our daily experience, and are not information about what God did or will do. If faith calls God "almighty," it uses the human experience of power in order to symbolize the content of its infinite concern, but it does not describe a highest being who can do as he pleases. God is a symbol of God.
Discussions about the existence or nonexistence of God are meaningless. The right question is which of the innumerable symbols of faith are most adequate to the meaning of faith, or which symbols of ultimacy express the ultimate without idolatrous elements.
Symbols. The holy can never be experienced or expressed directly but can only be experienced and expressed symbolically, through words, rituals, and objects. The symbol is not holy itself, but it points to the holy. Symbols cannot be invented; they grow out of the individual or collective unconscious and cannot function without being accepted by the unconscious dimension of our being. They grow when the situation is ripe for them, and they die when the situation changes.
Myths. Myths are symbols of faith combined in stories about divine-human encounters. The fundamental creation of every religious community is a myth that functions as the symbolic expression of ultimate concern. Myth cannot be replaced by philosophy or by an independent code of morals. It keeps faith alive.
Atheism. Atheism can only mean the attempt to remove any ultimate concern--to remain unconcerned about the meaning of one's existence. Indifference toward the ultimate question is the only imaginable form of atheism. Perhaps no one can be an atheist.
Idolatrous Faith. Making a nation or success one's ultimate concern is idolatry, as is making Jesus or the God of the Old Testament an ultimate concern. Idolatry elevates finite realities to the rank of ultimacy.
Risk, Doubt, Courage. There is always a risk that what one has considered a matter of ultimate concern will prove to be a matter of preliminary and transitory concern. If one becomes aware that one has devoted one's life to an idolatrous concern, the meaning of one's life breaks down; the reaction is despair. We always risk making this mistake. A consequence of the risk of faith is doubt. To affirm our faith in spite of our doubt requires courage.
Community. Only as a member of a community of faith (even if in isolation or expulsion) can man actualize his faith. The community creates the language of symbol and myth, which cannot be fully understood outside of the community. Without symbol and myth, there is no act of faith, no religious experience.
Creeds. Every community of faith tries to formulate the content of its faith in a creed. The purpose of the creed is to protect members of the community from idolatrous concern, which destroys the center of the personality. However, a community's creed must never exclude the presence of doubt. The community of faith that demands unquestioning surrender to its creed as formulated by the religious authorities has become static. The fight against the idolatrous implication of this kind of static faith was waged first by Protestantism and then, when Protestantism itself became static, by the Enlightenment.
Protestant Principle. No creedal expression of the ultimate concern of the community--whether in liturgy, doctrine, or ethical precept--is ultimate. Rather, its function is to point to the ultimate which is beyond all of them. No church or person is infallible. No church has the right to put itself in the place of the ultimate. Its truth is judged by the ultimate. No truth or faith can be rejected, no matter what form it may appear in the history of faith, and no truth of faith is ultimate except the one that no man possesses it. This is the "Protestant principle."
What Faith Is Not. Faith is not intellectual; it is not belief; and it is not a matter of will. Faith has no connection with theoretical knowledge, whether it is a knowledge on the basis of immediate, prescientific or scientific evidence, or whether it is on the basis of trust in authorities who themselves are dependent on direct or indirect evidence. Faith is not belief, which is knowledge with a low degree of probability. Faith is not a matter of will. No arguments for belief, no command to believe, and no will to believe can create faith.
Types of Faith. Every faith is either an ontological or moral type of faith. The ontological type of faith is concerned with the sense of the presence of the holy here and now. There are three types of ontological faith: sacramental faith, mystical faith, and humanism. Moral types of faith are characterized the idea of the law. Again there are three types of moral faith: Juristic (developed in Talmudic Judaism and Islam), conventional (most prominent in Confucianist China), and ethical (represented by the Jewish prophets). As Protestantism developed, it became more and more a representative of the moral type of ultimate concern. In this way it lost many of the ritual traditions of the Catholic churches, as well as a full understanding of the presence of the holy in sacramental and mystical experiences.
Reason. There can be no conflict between reason and faith as ultimate concern. Reason conflicts with faith only when the faith is idolatrous.
Scientific Truth. Scientific truth and the truth of faith belong to different dimensions of meaning. Science has no right and no power to interfere with faith. Nor can theologians use the latest physical or biological or psychological discoveries to confirm faith.
Historical Truth. Faith cannot be shaken or confirmed by historical research. Whether Moses actually existed or whether the New Testament miracle stories actually happened or whether the presently used edition of the Koran is identical with the original text are questions of historical truth, not of the truth of faith.
Philosophical Truth. Philosophical truth consists in true concepts concerning the ultimate; the truth of faith consists in true symbols concerning the ultimate.
Conventional Faith. Many people have a conventional faith, a traditional attitude without tensions. Their faith is dead. They have no doubt and need no courage to practice this faith. But their faith can come alive again through contact with religious symbols.
Integration of the Personality. The integration of the personality can be brought about only by faith. The life of faith can be the way of discipline which regulates the daily life; it can be the way of meditation and contemplation; or it can be the way of concentration on ordinary work, on a special aim or on another human being.
Faith, Love, and Action. Faith implies love, which is the desire to be reunited with the divine. The immediate expression of love is action. Faith implies love and is the expression of love in action. While it is true that no human action can produce reunion with God, there is no faith without love and no love without works.
Religious Tolerance. All religions try to express the same ultimate concern; they conflict only about the proper expression of this ultimate concern. Most communities of faith are tolerant of each other. Some important exceptions, however, are the Roman Church's assertion that it alone possesses the truth and Protestant fundamentalism's disdain of all other forms of Christianity and religion.
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About the author
In what do you place your Faith? What is your Ultimate Concern?
"Faith is the state of being ultimately concerned: the dynamics of faith are the dynamics of man's ultimate concern" (1). That is how this short book by Paul Tillich (1886-1965), the great Protestant theologian, begins. This definition is not very clear, and so the book is devoted to making sense of it. The sections are: 1) What Faith Is 2) What Faith Is Not 3) Symbols of Faith 4) Types of Faith 5) The Truth of Faith and 6) The Life of Faith. Be aware that this is not a pop psychology self-help book. It is analytical philosophy. Key to Tillich's view of faith is the role of symbols. "Man's ultimate concern must be expressed symbolically, because symbolic language alone is able to express the ultimate... Symbols ... point beyond themselves to something else" 47). "...[E]verything which is a matter of unconditional concern is made into a god" (50). So the nation, or success, are made into gods -- these are the examples Tillich uses. "In this way concepts designating ordinary realities become idolatrous symbols of ultimate concern" (51). Hitler, Trump, and the Almighty Dollar. It seems that with this use of "ultimate concern" as his definition, Tillich wants to have it both ways. On the one hand, humans can have faith in anything they consider to be their ultimate concern, or even treat as their ultimate concern even though they deny it. But on the other hand, most of these concerns are not actually ultimate, and are thus examples of idolatry. Many evangelicals consider Tillich to be an atheist because he does not consider their God -- God as a being, and therefore necessarily finite -- to be ultimate. (For Tillich God is the ground of being, not a being.) "...[F]aith is not a phenomenon beside others, but the central phenomenon in man's personal life, manifest and hidden at the same time. It is religious and transcends religion, it is universal and concrete, it is infinitely variable, and always the same... Faith stands upon itself and justifies itself against those who attack it, because they can only attack it in the name of another faith. It is the triumph of the dynamics of faith that any denial of faith is itself an expression of faith, of an ultimate concern" (146-47). As for me, I have no faith in the Ground of Being. My ultimate concern is Life On Earth -- all life, not just human life. My priority is to prevent the destruction of the biosphere/ecosystem which supports human life and all other life on our planet. And I call on everyone, including those who have faith in the Ground of Being, to join me in this cause. I would not want the only thing resting on the Ground of Being to be a lifeless rock. *** *** *** Paul Tillich (1886-1965), the great Protestant theologian, found a large audience with this book, which was published in 1957, five years after "The Courage to Be." Many evangelicals also considered him an atheist, which "Dynamics of Faith" shows is laughable. Tillich did fiercely attack a simple-minded view of God which he saw as provoking atheism as a natural and valid reaction (see "The Courage to Be"). Paul Tillich was also an outspoken opponent of the Nazis, and when they seized power in Germany in 1933, he was removed from his position as Professor of Philosophy and Sociology at the University of Frankfurt, and came to the U.S., where he taught at the Union Theological Seminary, and later Harvard University and the University of Chicago.
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