Lewis and Tillich

HMXP 102

Dr. Fike

Lewis, Mere Christianity

• We are going to discuss quotations from Lewis’s text.

• In small groups, take 5 minutes to identify passages/quotations that you consider most worthy of discussion. Select several passages that you find interesting, important, or controversial.

Par. 5, right: Types of Conversion Experiences

• “As well, the thing I am talking of now may not happen to every one in a sudden flash—as it did to St. Paul or Bunyan: it may be so gradual that no one could ever point to a particular hour or even a particular year. And what matters is the nature of the change in itself, not how we feel while it is happening. It is the change from being confident about our own efforts to the state in which we despair of doing anything for ourselves and leave it to God.”

How To Improve Your Life?

• Lewis, end of par. 3: A person “cannot get into the right relation until he has discovered the fact of our bankruptcy” (my emphasis).

• Lewis, middle of par. 13: “‘I have not come to torment your natural self, but to kill it. No half-measures are any good. … Hand over the whole natural self…. I will give you a new self instead.’”

• Do we have within us all that we need?– “a first faint gleam of Heaven is already inside you” (end of par.

6)– God “is inside you as well as outside” (middle of par. 8)

Ephesians 4:22-24

• “Put off your old nature which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and put on the new nature, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.”

• Cf. Romans 6:6; Ephesians 2:15; and Colossians 3:9-11.

• For commentary see: http://www.bible.org/page.php?page_id=434

Metanoia from dictionary.com

• Webster's New Millennium™ Dictionary of English

• Main Entry:  metanoia• Part of Speech:  n• Definition:  spiritual conversion or

awakening; fundamental change of character

• Etymology:  Greek 'change one's mind, repent'

Par. 16: The Total Self? Connection to Tillich?

• “For what we are trying to do is to remain what we call ‘ourselves’, to keep personal happiness as our great aim in life, and yet at the same time be ‘good’. We are all trying to let our mind and heart go their own way—centred on money or pleasure or ambition—and hoping, in spite of this, to behave honestly and chastely and humbly. And that is exactly what Christ warned us you could not do. As He said, a thistle cannot produce figs.”

Improvement

• Par. 17: “listening to that other voice, taking that other point of view, letting that other larger, stronger, quieter life come flowing in.”

• Par. 21: “And there are strange, exciting hints in the Bible that when we are drawn in, a great many other things in Nature will begin to come right.”

Par. 22: Other Religions

• “If you are a Christian, you are free to think that all those religions, even the queerest ones, contain at least some hint of the truth. … But, of course, being a Christian does mean thinking that where Christianity differs from other religions, Christianity is right and they are wrong. As in arithmetic—there is only one right answer to a sum, and all other answers are wrong; but some of the wrong answers are much nearer being right than others….”

The Point of This Class• Knowledge is a construct. Understanding this point is one of our

course goals.

• So is the notion that only Christianity is completely true something that culture has constructed? If you believe that, are you listening to “mother culture”? OR is Lewis identifying a fundamental truth about who we are?

• According to Lewis, is it okay to cherry pick Christianity, taking what appeals to you and leaving the rest? (Lewis seems to think that it is okay to do that with other religions.)

• Is it enough just to be a moral person?

• What is YOUR position on any of this? END

Paul Tillich

• Pronunciation: TILL-ik

• http://people.bu.edu/wwildman/WeirdWildWeb/courses/mwt/dictionary/mwt_themes_755_tillich.htm

Group Activity

Directions: Summarize the main ideas in your assigned section. Be prepared to answer the questions that follow in this slide show.

• Group 1: Section 1, all pars.• Group 2: Section 2, pars. 6-9• Group 3: Section 2, pars. 10-12• Group 4: Section 3, pars. 13-15• Group 5: Section 3, pars. 16-18

Section 1: Definition

• Pars. 1 & 5: What is Tillich’s definition of faith?

• Par. 2: What does faith promise?

• Par. 3: What does faith require?

• Pars. 3-4: What threat is implicit?

Pars. 1 & 5: What is Tillich’s definition of faith?• Par. 1: “Faith is the state of being ultimately

concerned: the dynamics of faith are the dynamics of man’s ultimate concern.”

• Par. 5: “Faith is the state of being ultimately concerned. The content matters infinitely for the life of the believer, but it does not matter for the formal definition of faith.”

Pars. 2-3

• Par. 2: What does faith promise?– “ultimate fulfillment”

• Par. 3: What does faith require? – “total surrender to the subject of ultimate

concern”

• Par. 3: What threat is implicit?– “the threat is the exclusion from such

fulfillment through national extinction and individual catastrophe”

More on Section 1

• Do we have “ultimate concern” with something other than God?

• What does Tillich say about this in Section 1, par. 4?

• What does Tillich’s example promise and threaten?

Answers

• Do we have “ultimate concern” with something other than God?– Yes, “success…social standing…economic power”

• What does Tillich say about this in Section 1, par. 4?– “it demands unconditional surrender to its laws”

• What does Tillich’s example promise and threaten?– “Its threat is social and economic defeat…and its

promise…the fulfillment of one’s being.”– And yet: “When fulfilled, the promise of this faith

proves to be empty.”

Section 2

• What does it mean to say that faith is a “centered act”?

Answer• Faith is a “centered act” if it takes place “in the center of the personal life

and includes all its elements” (par. 6). It “is an act of the personality as a whole.” “It is the unity of every element of the centered self” (par. 6).

• Par. 9: A person’s “self” is “the center of self-relatedness, in which all elements of [a person’s] being are united.”

• Faith is a “centered act” if it includes all of these binary oppositions:– Conscious and unconscious (see next slide)– Superego, ego, and id (two slides ahead)– Reason, will, and emotion (three slides ahead)– Cognition, will, and emotion

• Par. 7: “if unconscious forces determine the mental status without a centered act, faith does not occur, and compulsions take its place.”

• Par. 10: Faith is “ecstatic” if it transcends these oppositions.

Key Quotation about the Unconscious

• “…faith is a conscious act and the unconscious elements participate in the creation of faith only if they are taken into the personal center which transcends each of them” (par. 7).

Ego and Superego

• Par. 8: How does faith relate to the superego? What does Tillich say in Section 2, par. 8 about the superego?

• What are the good and bad ways in which the superego can become integrated into faith?

Answer

• Par. 8: How does faith relate to the superego? What does Tillich say in Section 2, par. 8 about the superego?– “the symbols of faith are considered to be expressions

of the superego”

• What are the good and bad ways in which the superego can become integrated into faith?– “tyrant” vs. “father image”– “truth and justice”

Reason and Nonrational Elements

• Par. 9: “Faith is not an act of any of his rational functions, as it is not an act of the unconscious, but it is an act in which both the rational and the nonrational elements of his being are transcended.”

Par. 10: Ecstasy

• Faith that “transcends both the drives of the nonrational unconscious and the structures of the rational conscious” is said to be “ecstatic.”

• Ecstasy = “‘standing outside of oneself.’”• [John Donne has a poem called “The

Extasy.” See http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/donne/ecstacy.htm.]

Par. 11: Cognition vs. Emotion and Will• What is the relationship between faith and

thinking? Are they mutually exclusive? Or can faith be a rational act?

• What does Tillich say about cognition, will, and feeling here?

• Do they PRODUCE faith?

Tillich’s Point

• Cognition, emotion, and will are all in faith but do not cause it.

• “It [faith] is the unity of every element of the centered self.”

• IOW, cognition, emotion, and will, along with consciousness/the unconscious and ego/superego, are all present in the act of faith.

Section 2, Par. 12

• “Faith precedes all attempts to derive it from something else, because these attempts are themselves based on faith.”

• What does this mean, esp. regarding “fear”? Answer: Fear is not a valid origin of faith.

Section 3, Par. 13: Tillich’s Definition of Faith at This Point

• Summary of Sections 1 and 2: “Faith is a total and centered act of the personal self, the act of unconditional, infinite and ultimate concern.”

• Now he asks about the source of faith in Section 3, par. 14. What does he say?

Section 3, Par. 14

• What does Tillich mean in the following quotation?

• “Man is driven toward faith by his awareness of the infinite to which he belongs, but which he does not own like a possession. This is in abstract terms what concretely appears as the ‘restlessness of the heart’ within the flux of life.”

In Other Words

• The source of faith is twofold: – awareness of the infinite– passion for the infinite

Par. 15: An Important Distinction

• What is the difference between subjective faith and objective faith?

Answers

• Subjective faith = the act of believing.• Objective faith = the object of belief (content).• The object of faith = divinity, ultimacy.• But the distinction between subjective and

objective faith disappears in the experience of the ultimate: “The term ‘ultimate concern’ unites the subjective and the objective side of the act of faith” (par. 16).

Idolatry

• What is your definition of idolatry?

• What is Tillich’s?

Tillich’s Answer

• Idolatry = having ultimate faith in something that is not ultimate.

• Par. 18: “In true faith[,] the ultimate concern is a concern about the truly ultimate; while in idolatrous faith[,] preliminary, finite realities are elevated to the rank of ultimacy.”

What is the result of idolatry?

• Par. 18: “‘existential disappointment’”

• “…the act of faith leads to a loss of the center and to a disruption of the personality.”

Final Question Related to Tillich

• What is YOUR ultimate concern?

• Has it disappointed you?

• What do you put your faith in?

• Are you in the world but not of it? END