Harvard Divinity School

Tillich and Heidegger: A Structural RelationshipAuthor(s): Thomas F. O'MearaSource: The Harvard Theological Review, Vol. 61, No. 2 (Apr., 1968), pp. 249-261Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Harvard Divinity SchoolStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1509278 .Accessed: 23/04/2011 18:41

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HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW 6I (1968), 249-261

TILLICH AND HEIDEGGER:

A STRUCTURAL RELATIONSHIP

THOMAS F. O'MEARA, O.P.

AQUINAS INSTITUTE SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY

ASSOCIATION OF THEOLOGICAL FACULTIES IN IOWA

THE evaluation of Tillich's theological system in America and Great Britain (incipient in Germany but almost nonexistent in

France) inevitably takes a stand on two questions. It asks whether Tillich is a theologian or a philosopher, and it asks whether he is an existentialist, an idealist, or, perhaps, both. The second question has almost as many opinions as answers. Is Tillich

solely or basically a product of the German nineteenth century? Is he an existentialist despite his system, or an idealist despite his demand for existential theology? Or is Tillich merely an existen- tialist in his general terminology, while the horizon and form of his thought (because of ontology and system) is of the nine- teenth century?

The following study attempts to analyze the relationship of Tillich's systematic theology - his theology as a whole and, in

particular, his theology of God (the initial areas of the Systematic Theology) - to the fundamental ontology of Martin Heidegger. An evaluation of the structural relationship of Heidegger's on- tology to areas of Tillich's systematic theology should help answer the questions mentioned above. It may also illustrate another facet of the increasing influence of Heidegger on contemporary theology.

I

Tillich writes that he had the nineteenth century for his teacher during his university years from 1904 to 1907.1 "The spirit of the nineteenth century still prevailed, and we hoped that the great synthesis between Christianity and humanism could be achieved

'PAUL TILLICH, Ultimate Concern (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), 37.

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with the tools of German classical philosophy." 2 Although he could not unlearn all he had imbibed during these formative years, Tillich saw that the World War had brought an end to this entire intellectual world.3 "I find more 'theonomous philosophy' in Schelling than in any of the other idealists. But to be sure, not even Schelling was able to bring about a unity of theology and philosophy. The World War in my own experience was the catas- trophe of idealistic thinking in general. Even Schelling's philoso- phy was drawn into this catastrophe." 4 Still, Schelling's second period had been "a prelude to the things to come," 5 "the philoso- phically decisive break with Hegel and the beginning of that movement which today is called existentialism." " Although works by others on his own thought made Tillich more conscious of the importance of Schelling for him, the decisive confirmation of Tillich's opinion on Schelling had come to him as he encountered the "Philosophy of Life" and the philosophy and art of existen- tialism.7 If Schelling could only be correctly understood in light of the currents which with Kierkegaard and Husserl would spark the various forms of existentialism, still he was different from ex- istentialism. Tillich's early writings, his dissertations for the doc- torate in philosophy and the licentiate in theology (both on Schel- ling),8 an interesting program for a Religionsphilosophie 9 were original yet distinctively related to Schelling. All were written before Tillich's decisive years at Marburg. To study Schelling's influence on Tillich (a fortiori, other influences of the nineteenth

2 TILLICH, Autobiographical Reflections, The Theology of Paul Tillich, C. W.

Kegley, R. W. Brettal, eds. (New York: Macmillan, 1952), I1. 'TILLICH, The Interpretation of History (New York: Scribner's, 1936), 60. 4 Ibid., 35. 5 Autobiographical Reflections, art. cit., ii. SIbid., 14. 7 TILLICH, Vorwort, Friihe Hauptwerke, Gesammelte Werke (Stuttgart: Evange-

lisches Verlagswerk, 1959), I, 9; see Existential Philosophy: Its Historical Meaning, Theology of Culture (New York: Galaxy, 1964), 77-79. '

TILLICH'S thesis for the doctorate in philosophy was: Die religionsgeschicht- liche Konstruktion in Schellings positiver Philosophie, ihre Voraussetzungen und Prinzipien (Breslau: Fleischmann, 1910); for the licentiate in theology: Mystik und Schuldbewusstsein in Schellings philosophischer Entwicklung (Giitersloh: Bertelsmann, i912); the licentiate thesis is reprinted in Friihe Hauptwerke, ed. cit., II-io8.

9TILLICH, Religionsphilosophie, Lehrbuch der Philosophie, M. Dessoir, ed. (Berlin: Ullstein, 1925), II, 765-835, reprinted in Friihe Hauptwerke, ed. cit., 295-366.

TILLICH AND HEIDEGGER 251

century) in these works is quite a different matter from under- standing the influence of the German philosopher on Tillich's ma- ture works. The form and influence of "existentialism," the varied new intellectual encounters from Marburg to New York after 1925 cannot be underestimated if the valid meaning of Til- lich's vocabulary and thought is to be met. Often the same ideas appear in the later works as in the early studies on Schelling, but in the later works there are overtones of German existentialism, or of Greek and scholastic philosophy. Tillich acknowledges that his systematic apologetic theology is intentionally existential and that existentialism, while not the only philosophy, is a natural ally of Christianity. Existentialism has analysed the predicament of man and his world, and thereby has helped to rediscover the classical Christian interpretation of human existence.10 If it is clear that Tillich saw himself as a theologian for whom revelation was in dialogue with man as analysed by existentialism, and that Schelling for Tillich was a propaedeutic thinker, still it is not clear how or how deeply the far from unified movement called existentialism formed his thought.

Tillich in an autobiographical essay describes the entrance of Heidegger and existentialism.

In Marburg, in 1925, I began work on my Systematic Theology, the first volume of which appeared in I951. At the same time that Heideg- ger was in Marburg as professor of philosophy, influencing some of the best students, existentialism in its twentieth-century form crossed my path. It took years before I became fully aware of the impact of this encounter on my own thinking. I resisted, I tried to learn, I accepted the new way of thinking more than the answer it gave."

Two things here are important: first, it was through Heidegger (with whom during these years surrounding the appearance of Sein und Zeit Tillich was in personal contact) that Tillich en- countered existentialism; secondly, Tillich accepted more the structure, the method, the Denkform of this philosophy than its content. Although Tillich speaks of "Existential philosophy," it is clear from his works that he appreciates the differences in

oTILLIcH, Systematic Theology (Chicago: University Press, I957), II, 19-28; cited as ST II.

' Autobiographical Reflections, art. cit., 14.

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existentialists, and that this means for him a German philosophy present today in Heidegger and Jaspers. "Existential philosophy thus seems a specifically German creation . . . counting among its leaders such men as Heidegger and Jaspers." 12 In The In- terpretation of History Tillich gives us more details on Mar-

burg and Heidegger.

By the appearance of the so-called "Existential Philosophy" in Ger- many, I was led to a new understanding of the relation between philosophy and theology. The lectures of M. Heidegger given at Marburg, the impression which some Marburg students and some of my colleagues experienced; then his writing, Sein und Zeit (Being and Time), also his interpretation of Kant, were of greater signifi- cance to followers and opponents of this philosophy than anything else since the appearance of Husserl's Logische Untersuchungen (Logical Studies).13

Tillich was prepared to accept this philosophy because of Schel-

ling, Kierkegaard, and the philosophy of life.

These three elements, comprised and submerged into a sort of Augustinian-colored mysticism, produced that which fascinated people in Heidegger's philosophy .... By its very explanation of human existence it establishes a doctrine of man, though unintentionally, which is both the doctrine of human freedom and human finiteness; and which is so closely related with the Christian interpretation of human existence that one is forced to speak of a "theonomous phil- osophy," in spite of Heidegger's emphatic atheism . . . . the phil- osophy of existence asks the question in a new and radical manner, the answer to which is given in theology for faith.14

Tillich's correct understanding of Heidegger is shown not only by his placing him in a certain limited category of existential

thought, but by his designation of him as an ontologist, a point of

12TILLICH, Existential Philosophy ..., art. cit., 77. "The third and con-

temporary form of Existential philosophy has resulted from a combination of this Philosophy of Life with Husserl's shift of emphasis from existent objects to the mind that makes them its objects, and with the rediscovery of Kierkegaard and of the early developments of Marx. Heidegger, Jaspers, and the Existential inter- pretation of history found in German Religious Socialism are the main representa- tives of the third period of this philosophy of experienced Existence." Ibid., 79.

1 TrrLICH, The Interpretation of History, ed. cit., 39-40. 1" Ibid.

TILLICH AND HEIDEGGER 253

rediscovery of ontology in this century. "Heidegger claims to de- scribe the structure of Being itself." '~ There are relatively few references to Heidegger in the entire Systematic Theology, even fewer in other works. Heidegger's relationship to Tillich is a structural one, and as such important. It enters into the very structure of theology as Tillich conceives and develops it; it offers the structural foundation for the first example of that theology in action: Tillich's theology of Ultimate Concern (his phenomenological and hence introductory term for God) as Being- Itself.

II

As an apologetic rather than kerygmatic theology, answering the contemporary situation, Tillich's theology must speak to man in both existential (from the ontological analysis of human exist- ence related to Being) and existentiell (what affects man person- ally in his concrete life) terms. Theology, as much as it might use ontology, is not philosophy reflecting on God; it is the explana- tion for its hearers of the symbols through which revelation, fully initiated by God but contained in many media, comes to man.'6 Ontology may ask the questions, but it cannot answer them. Phil- osophy has an important role because the questions which revel- ation answers are existential-ontological, concerned with man's existence and Being, and these questions will through correlation bring in the answers.7 The method for bringing revelation to man's situation, for joining human question and divine answer is Tillich's well-known correlation. Tillich calls correlation the

1STILLICH, Systematic Theology (Chicago: University Press, 1951), I, 20o8 (cited as ST I); ST II, ii. A year after the appearance of Sein und Zeit Tillich made the remark: "Heidegger's ontology, the greatness of which depends on the fact that it undertakes to create a rational myth of being, indicates how correct this con- ception of metaphysics is." Das religiSse Symbol, Bliitter fiir deutsche Philosophie I (1928), 277-91; a translation appears in Journal of Liberal Religion 2 (1950), '3-33.

16ST I, 8ff., 22ff., 2Io; see TILLICH, Theology and Religious Symbolism, Religious Symbols, F. E. Johnson, ed. (New York: Harper & Bros., 1955), io8.

1 TILLIcH says the ontological question may not determine the answer, revela- tion; the question is precontained in the answer; ST II, 14-18. "Faith includes the ontological question whether the question is asked explicitly or not." Biblical Religion and the Search for Ultimate Reality (Chicago: University Press, 1955), 59.

254 HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW

"method and structure" of theology,s8 and he relates it to Hei-

degger.

In using the method of correlation, systematic theology proceeds in the following way: it makes an analysis of the human situation out of which the existential questions arise, and it demonstrates that the symbols used in the Christian message are the answers to these ques- tions. The analysis of the human situation is done in terms which today are called "existential." Such analyses are much older than existentialism . ... (Man) has become aware of the fact that he himself is the door to the deeper levels of reality, that in his own existence he has the only possible approach to existence itself . the immediate experience of one's own existing reveals something of the nature of existence generally. Whoever has penetrated into the nature of his own finitude can find the traces of finitude in every- thing that exists. And he can ask the question implied in his finitude as the question implied in finitude universally.'9

Tillich adds in a note that an example of this is Heidegger: "Hei-

degger's notion of 'Dasein' (being there) as the form of human existence and the entrance to ontology." 20

Tillich's correlated analysis of man centers in terms of finitude, anxiety, meaninglessness, care born of the threat of ontological nonexistence and personal meaninglessness. Tillich shows his accurate understanding of Heidegger when he relates his own use of the existential analysis of Dasein in these terms to a deeper ontological background. Meaninglessness, anxiety are not basic- ally psychological terms for Tillich and Heidegger but human forms of ontological finitude.21 Tillich, referring again to Heideg- ger, affirms that the fundamental interpretation of human existence is finitude entering through non-being. "Both the basic ontologi- cal structure and the ontological elements imply finitude . Finitude is experienced on the human level; non-being is experi- enced as the threat to being. . . . Finitude in awareness is anx-

18sST I, 66, 59. 1o ST I, 62.

2 Ibid. How Tillich is related to and employs phenomenology is another question. Tillich offers a phenomenology of God, but his method and epistemologi- cal views do not seem to allow a quick identification of Tillich's phenomenology with that of Husserl.

'"Anxiety about meaninglessness is the characteristically human form of on- tological anxiety . ... the threat against the finite structure of being." ST I, 210.

TILLICH AND HEIDEGGER 255

iety." 22 Heidegger writes: "Existence as a kind of being of Being is in itself finitude, and as such only possible on the basis of an understanding of Being . .."23 Human existence, for

Heidegger, is finite in the very roots of its Being, and as a mani- festation of Being. Heidegger's analysis of human existence in Sein und Zeit takes as its point of departure explicitly and implic- itly finitude. In an essay, "Existential Philosophy: Its Historical Meaning," Tillich describes the "most important" attempts in Heidegger's interpretation of Kant and in Sein und Zeit to ana- lyze finitude as central in a philosophy of Dasein, and to draw out finitude's relations to time, estrangement, guilt, and through guilt (for Tillich, at least) to the Fall.24 Tillich has given indication in his presentation of theology as such that basic lines of its correlated structure in the first section, "Being and God," have been built on Heidegger.

Heidegger's notion of Dasein was not only the form of human existence but the entrance to ontology, going beyond an analysis of human existence, returning to the study of Being in its manifold

22 ST I, 189, 190, 191; TILLICH writes: "Anxiety is independent of any special object which might produce it; it is dependent only on the threat of non-being - which is identical with finitude. In this sense it has been said rightly that the ob- ject of anxiety is 'nothingness' - and nothingness is not an 'object.' " ST I, 191. HEIDEGGER had prepared this analysis: "Angst is always Angst about . . but not before this or that . ... Angst reveals nothingness." Was ist Metaphysik? (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1960), 32. All translations of HEIDEGGER are by the author.

' MARTIN HEIDEGGER, Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik (Frankfurt:

Klostermann, 1951), 206; in HEIDEGGER'S interpretation human finitude is the point of Kant's thought; ibid., 196, I98ff. HEIDEGGER says that Dasein is also in its existence ec-static (Was ist Metaphysik, ed. cit., I5), and in this dynamic and transcendent. But this is neither a divinization of being nor an implication of God's entrance. It is simply a further description of the open relationship of Dasein to Being, unique among existents. KARL RAHNER, S.J., develops this, among other insights of HEIDEGGER, in his fundamental theological analysis of man as open to God, man as Geist in freedom and knowing; Hirer des Wortes (Munich: K6sel, 1963), 2 ed. RAHNER is another example of a theologian employing basic approaches of Heidegger; he studied philosophy in Freiburg from 1934 to 1936.

24 TILLIcH, Existential Philosophy . . . , art. cit., Io2f.; TILLICH cites Sein und Zeit (Ttibingen: Niemeyer, 1963), 284 (all of the following citations are from the tenth edition), that guilt does not follow from an act but presupposes a state of guilt. One should be slow to identify Heidegger's analysis of man's de facto situation with a union of a theological Fall with ontological existence; on this subject see J. M. HOLLENBACK, Sein und Gewissen (Baden-Baden: Grimm, 1954); P. ENGELHARDT, O.P., Eine Begegnung zwischen Martin Heidegger und thomisti- scher Philosophie?, Freiburger Zeitschrift fiir Philosophie und Theologie 3 (1956), 187-96.

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appearances in beings. That this was Heidegger's method and

purpose was clear (but, later, not always perceived) in the intro-

ductory pages of Sein und Zeit. He writes:

The question of the meaning of Being must be asked. If it is a funda- mental question, or indeed the fundamental question, it must be made

transparent, and in an appropriate way . . . . In the question which we are going to work out, what is asked about is Being - that which determines beings as beings, and on the basis of which beings are understood however we may discuss them in detail. But Being of

beings "is" not itself a being.25 Thus to work out the question of Being adequately, we must make a

being - the inquirer itself - transparent to its own Being. The very asking of this question is a being's mode of Being; and as such it gets its essential character from what is being inquired about in it-- namely, Being. This being we denote by the term "Dasein." If we are to formulate our question explicitly and transparently, we must first give a provisional but proper explication of a being (Dasein) with regards to its Being . . . If to interpret the meaning of Being becomes our task, Dasein is not only the primary being to be interro-

gated; it is also that being which already comports itself, in its Being, towards that which we are asking about in our question.26

The analysis of Dasein was only the initial stage of philosophy's task. Heidegger writes thirty-five years after Sein und Zeit:

One need only observe the simple fact that in Being and Time the

problem is set up outside the sphere of subjectivism - that the en- tire anthropological problematic is kept at a distance, that the normative issue is emphatically and solely the experience of There-

being (Dasein) with a constant eye to the Being-question . . . 27

Dasein, the unique being where the event of Being takes place, will reveal of its own intrinsic accord what and how it is (as finite, transcendent to Being, existent, ontologically comprehending) through a phenomenological analysis. This exegesis, the inter-

pretation, the hermeneutic of human existence sets us on the path towards understanding something of the mystery of Being.28

25 HEIDEGGER, Sein und Zeit, ed. cit., 5, 6. 2 Ibid., 7, 14. 27 HEIDEGGER, "Vorwort," to WILLIAM RICHARDSON, S.J., Heidegger: Through

Phenomenology to Thought (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1963), xviii. 28HEIDEGGER, Sein und Zeit, ed. cit., 34-40. "The broad lines of Heidegger's

TILLICH AND HEIDEGGER 257

Tillich accepts such an analysis as the right starting point for an ontology to be correlated in theology to revelation. He also accepts the support for this method in the nature of human exist- ence as the place where Being "takes place." Dasein is where Sein reveals itself, and so it is possible and necessary for man to ask ultimate questions, questions of being and non-being, ques- tions which point to further, distant inaccessible answers.

Every being participates in the structure of being, but man alone is immediately aware of this structure .... Man occupies a pre- eminent position in ontology, not as an outstanding object among other objects, but as that being who asks the ontological question and in whose self-awareness the ontological answer can be found. .. "Philosophers of life" and "existentialists" have reminded us in our time of this truth on which ontology depends. Characteristic in this respect is Heidegger's method in Sein und Zeit. He calls "Dasein" ("being there") the place where the structure of being is manifest. But "Dasein" is given to man within himself. Man is able to answer the ontological question himself because he experiences directly and immediately the structure of being and its elements.29

In the first volume of the Systematic Theology, Tillich's method is to lead through this understanding of man as the place where Being enters and where finitude calls forth varied forms in man's life and world to the ontological categories of being.30 "Ontology is possible because there are concepts which are less universal

problematic are now clear (after the first part, the Introduction) . ... Funda- mental ontology, itself only a preliminary analysis to expose the horizon necessary for the analysis of the sense of Being itself, will prepare to interrogate the Being that is comprehended by first interrogating the comprehending itself. The prelude to the question of Being is the question of There-being (Dasein)." RICHARDSON, op. cit., 40o.

"ST I, I68f.; TILICH always emphasizes that man is not more easily acces- sible as an object of knowledge than other objects or more certain of his inner thoughts than external realities, but that man is where awareness encounters Being.

?TmILIc's "metaphysical shock" - the possibility of non-being in light of the fact of being - gives rise to the question of ultimates in theology, the question of Being-Itself. Tillich says the question has been expressed in the form: "Why is there something; why not nothing?" ST I, 163f. HEIDEGGER states the basic question of metaphysics as: "Why is there beings, and why not, much more nothing? That is the question." Einfiihrung in die Metaphysik (Tiibingen: Niemeyer, 1958), i. TILICH objects to this form with its final emphasis on nothing; the ultimate question must begin and stay with being. In HEIDEGGER'S Nachwort to the above work there is a transference of Nichts to Sein, and the work ends with a puzzling over the mystery - that there are beings. Ibid., 46f.

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than being but more universal than any ontic concept, that is, more universal than any concept designating a realm of being." 31

III

Heidegger's entire Denkweg is a "return" to the question of Sein. This attempt to go through man's unique existence to the ground of metaphysics is a fundamental ontology.32 We can still speak of Heidegger's ontology as a forward motion from Dasein through existential analysis to beings, from their ontological dif- ference from Being to Being's reality in beings. Heidegger's "step backwards" (Riickgang) is a return out of systems to a basic questioned area not yet answered, or incompletely or falsely an- swered. It is not a return to an earlier position in the history of philosophy, but a going deeper to the ultimate ground of thought, Being. Being is manifold, mysterious in the many ways it comes to be around us. Through Dasein, and through other beings, in the horizon of truth and language, historicity and time, the ques- tion of Being is a question not only about but by the depth and variety of the Being of beings.33

Tillich's analysis of Dasein is the question revelation answers, the form in which theology explains revelation. The analysis of Dasein and the further movement through ontological questions leads to God as Being-Itself.34 Being-Itself is beyond the limita- tions of a being, an existent; it is not within the structure of be- ing, but impervious to the threats to the meaning and being found in created participated beings.3"

Tillich, rightly, does not imply that his Being-Itself is the same as Heidegger's Sein, although there were times when he at least reflected upon this. In 1936, as we have seen, Tillich wrote that

81ST I, 164. 3

HEIDEGGER, Was ist die Metaphysik, ed. cit., 21. ' MAX MUtLLER, Existenz-Philosophie im geistigen Leben der Gegenwart

(Heidelberg: Kerle, 1964), 94ff. 14 ST I, 235-37. `

Ibid., 235-38. This seems to be the meaning of Being-Itself as explained by the Ground of Being and the Power of Being --that Being-Itself is not open to the multiple threat endangering finite beings. In the German version of ST I (which is more than a translation), the term Ground of Being is translated Grund des Seins and not Grund aller Seienden. TILLCH sees Being as within the created structure.

TILLICH AND HEIDEGGER 259

Heidegger's thought contains an "emphatic atheism." " Twelve years later Heidegger explicitly rejected the interpretation that the absence of God in his thought should be construed as atheism or nihilism, or that Being was God. "But Being - what is Be- ing? . . . Being is not God, nor a ground for the world. Being is broader than any individual being and is, at the same time, closer to man than all other beings whether they are rocks, ani- mals, works of art, machines, angels or God." 37

Tillich protests against the "supranaturalism" which makes God a being like all others. Tillich's search for the "God above the God of theism" is a basic principle for understanding his theology. "The God of theism is God limited by man's finite con- ceptions." 38 When Heidegger does touch on God, which is sel- dom,39 the sparse remarks are often accompanied by a similar protest against the God of the past which could be as easily and as thoroughly discussed in the academic fields of philosophy and theology as any other being. The above quotation from the Hu- manismusbrief has overtones of this, and the following interprets it:

. . Causa sui. This is the proportionately proper name for God in philosophy. To this God man can neither pray nor sacrifice .... Consequently the god-less thought, which gives up the God of philosophy, God as Causa sui, is perhaps closer to the god-like God.40

Since Sein is not God, and ontology's study of Sein and Dasein is only at its beginnings, there is no reason for philosophy to take up now the task of theology - if this is its task at all. "The on- tological interpretation of Dasein as being-in-the-world doesn't

36TLuLIcn, The Interpretation of History, ed. cit., 40. 37HEIDEGGER, tber den Humanismus (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1947), 76.

On the mistaken interpretation of HEIDEGGER'S Sein as God in the past decades see MAX MU1LLER, Op. cit., 65ff.

38TILLICH, Ultimate Concern, ed. cit., 51; TnILLCH writes that many forms of theology bring "God's existence down to the level of a stone or a star, and . . make atheism not only possible, but almost unavoidable." The Two Types of Philosophy of Religion, Theology of Culture, ed. cit., I8. * "He who has experienced theology--whether that of the Christian faith or that of philosophy--from the point of view of its origin and development pre- fers today in the area of thinking about God to keep quiet." HEIDEGGER, Die onto- theo-logische Verfassung der Metaphysik, in Identitdit und Differenz (Pfullingen: Neske, I957), 51.

'Ibid., 7of.; see Nietzsche's Wort 'Gott ist tot', Holzwege (Frankfurt: Kloster- mann, 1950), 235-39.

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decide positively or negatively about a possible Sein towards God." 41

To move to a further point, Heidegger and Tillich both link the mysterious Being to the holy. Tillich writes that like being and non-being the holy is related to ultimate concern.42 Heidegger's rare indication of how thought might go beyond Being to God in- troduces the sphere of the holy, a distance between the real and transcendent God, and the world of beings. "First of all, from the truth of Being is the nature of the holy able to be thought; and first of all, from the nature of the holy can we think out the nature of God - and in the light of the nature of God what the word 'God' should designate can be thought." 43 But, "while the holy appears, God remains distant." 44

Tillich's debt to Heidegger lies not here where Tillich's Being- Itself can be analyzed in dialogue with Aquinas, not in this area where Heidegger says so little, and where Sein and Being-Itself are reached through different (but not necessarily contradictory) thought-ways. A similar method brought them both from an analysis of human existence to these conclusions. Moreover, for both of them the movement was a movement of forms, a move- ment through the correlation of forms. If Aquinas calls God an unlimited subsistent and active fullness of all possible and actual aspects of being, this is because for him every being is a dependent effect of this independent being.45 Tillich and Heidegger do not involve themselves with the post-Kantian problem of transcend- ental causality. Their thought here is Platonic, one form im- plying or leading through insight or phenomenological analysis to another irrespective of causal foundation.46

41HEIDEGGER, Vom Wesen des Grundes (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1929), 39. 42 ST I, 216; see 215-17, 14. ' HEIDEGGER, tfber den Humanismus, ed. cit., 36f. 44HEIDEGGER, Heimkunft/ An die Verwandten, Erliuterungen zu Hiblderlins

Dichtung (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1951), 27. 4 "Given the existence of a creature as the effect of God, it is necessary that

there be God the creator . . . . the way of effect to cause is found indifferently in every caused being." In I Sent., d. 3, a. i, ad io.

6 TILLICH accepts the Kantian critique of causality as necessarily finite; ST I, 208-10, 237f. He favors the Augustinian-Neo-Platonic approach to God over that of Aquinas in The Two Types of the Philosophy of Religion, art. cit. TILLICH writes, "I believe that the Platonic (Augustinian-Franciscan) tradition is more fundamental for the understanding of our knowledge of God." Appreciation and Reply, in Paul Tillich in Catholic Thought (Chicago: The Priory Press, 1964), 307.

TILLICH AND HEIDEGGER 261

This structural resemblance between Heidegger and Tillich's theological system, though modest in concrete resemblance, is important. It helps answer the questions as to how Tillich can be called an existentialist, and how an existentialist can have strong similarities to ontology and system. Beyond the general existential terminology there is a basic influence on Tillich from Heidegger's general analytic. On the other hand, by seeing the form ontology takes, the respective limits of ontology and revela- tion in Tillich can be made clearer. An ontological framework does not necessarily imply that a theology is, ultimately, ontology.

Tillich's use of Heidegger is different from Bultmann's. It does not limit itself to existential analysis of man and to an anthro- pocentric theological picture, but employs fundamental ontology in its widest scope, combining the existential and Dasein-centered with ontology. The identification of Heidegger's thought with Bultmann's use of it is a likely cause of certain incomplete eval- uations of Heidegger current outside Germany. Tillich was inter- ested in the Heidegger of the first pages of Sein und Zeit; he neglected neither the existential analysis (which Bultmann chose to apply to the New Testament message) nor the ontology of Be- ing (which later works presented in place of the unpublished sec- tions of Sein und Zeit). Heinrich Ott, Karl Barth's successor at the University of Basel, has called attention (in a perspective different from Tillich's) to "a fullness (in Heidegger) of impor- tant perspectives for theology." 47 Because of Ott's theology, the important work of Robinson and Cobb,48 and the increasing in- fluence of contemporary German theology, Protestant and Catho- lic theology in the future is likely to find itself more than casually interested in the Denkweg of Heidegger - but, as Heidegger him- self sees it, as a beginning rather than as an end.

Hence the accuracy of J. HEYWOOD THOMAS' description of Tillich in brief as in the Augustinian tradition yet owing much to Schelling and Heidegger; Paul Tillich: An Appraisal (London: SCM, 1964), 174.

7 HEINRICH OTT, Geschichte und Heilsgeschichte in der Theologie Rudolf Bult- manns (Tiibingen: Mohr, I955), 202; this insight was developed, in dialogue with Barth, in Denken und Sein. Der Weg Martin Heideggers und der Weg der Theologie (Ziirich: EVZ-Verlag, 1959).

* The Later Heidegger and Theology, JAMES M. ROBINSON, JOHN B. COBB, eds. (New York: Harper and Row, 1963).