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II.  Is there a Third Alternative?

a.  The impossibility of eschewing philosophy altogether. Professor Tillich notes that early Protestantism wisely refrained from allying with any philosophy, for, he maintains, the only philosophy at its disposal was the cosmological type of later scholasticism. Actually this is probably a point which cuts both ways, inasmuch as the ontological was not unknown in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and does in fact come under the censure of the Reformers. Consequently it would seem that the Reformers were aware that not only the cosmological, but also the ontological, failed to do justice to the Biblical outlook which they had recovered.

And now once again in the twentieth century theology is witnessing a renewal of this same anti-philosophical tendency. For the contemporary resurgence of Reformation Theology on the Continent provides a close parallel to the sixteenth century, perhaps surpassing it in suspicion and even condemnation of all philosophy whatsoever. The theology generally associated with the name of Karl Barth seeks to avoid entanglement with any world view, any metaphysics, any sort of philosophy of religion, branding all such as “ideologies.” If the foregoing analysis is correct, then these contemporary reformers, no less than their predecessors, are shrewedly aware that an alliance with either of the “two types of philosophy of religion” would result in the dissolution of the Biblical insights which they have regained.

Nevertheless in refusing to have anything to do with philosophy, they are bound to fall prey to the superior wisdom of Professor Tillich. In such statements as, “There is no choice between philosophy and nophilosophy, but only between good and bad philsosophy,” he anticipates the impasse in which the Continental theologians find themselves. In so far as they use reason at all, they are embarked willy nilly on the philosophical enterprise. As a result of their refusal to acknowledge this, the result can only be (and has been) that they do in fact fall into some extremely embarrassing statements – statements which in fact belong to the very philosophy which they are anxious to repudiate. Barth, for example, as Oscar Cullmann has pointed out, frequently (though not always) makes the wholly unbiblical assumption that time as such is a curse, that the unchangeable is somehow superior to the changing one of the primary tenets of the “perennial philosophy” (W. T. Stace’s Time and Eternity, 1952, is perhaps the most recent reaffirmation of this position). In addition, when Barth implies that to become a Christian is simply to become aware that all men are saved, he shows a further kinship with the ontological approach (a kinship which can also be detected in Luther, as in the doctrine of the two realms, or the suggestion that the devil is merely the wrath of God). In all these cases, Professor Tillich has the last word. It is impossible to avoid philosophy, and the attempt to do so only betrays the theologian into the very positions he seeks to avoid.

The results of the foregoing discussion are perplexing, to say the least. On the one hand, it has been urged that neither of the two types of philosophy of religion can provide a Christian metaphysic. On the other hand, it is impossible to have theology without philosophy. From the horns of this dilemma there could be only one escape: a third type of philosophy of religion which would both provide a metaphysical basis for Biblical conceptions and also hold its own on the philosophical level. Though the elaboration of such a metaphysic would require the developement of new philosophical formulations, and formidable though such a task appears, the Christian can find some comfort in advance upon reflecting that such a third alternative would actually seem to be required by the doctrine of creation itself, in the sense that what is true about Heilsgeshichte (salvation) must also be true for philosophy (creation). In view of the dilemma into which theology falls, the development of such a third way may well be one of the most urgent theological tasks of today.

b.  Delineation of a third alternative. The point of departure for such a “Biblical metaphysic” would be that at which the whole noetic enterprise, the whole attempt at salvation by knowledge, is undercut; namely, the Biblical view that knowledge, instead of being primary, is in fact dependent upon the orientation of the heart. Accordingly the first step is an analysis of the curious and elusive phenomenon of human freedom. How is it distinguished from merely animal spontaneity so as to make men responsible for their actions in a way in which animals are not?

1.  Analysis of freedom. Above all, the distinctively human faculty for decision entails a reference beyond the self, a criterion of decision. It is impossible to act (or think) without implying some criterion of the good (or true). It is likewise impossible to formulate a theory of ethics (or of knowledge) without some such reference, whether explicit or not. That is, in all statements having to do with what is the good and what is true, there is a “because.” And to the natural question, “Because why?” the answer must ultimately be given in terms of the particular criterion, or reference beyond the self, of the person involved. The impossibility of avoiding such a criterion is vividly illustrated in the case of Nietzsche who undertook to get “beyond good and evil” altogether (i.e. beyond a criterion), but finally found himself obliged to declare simply that “fair is foul and foul is fair.” Confronted with the impossibility of getting beyond all criteria (or of achieving the “trans-moral conscience” which Professor Tillich advocates in The Protestant Era, Ch. 9), he had to content himself merely with exchanging one criterion for another. He was the prisoner of his own freedom, and so is all philosophy. [2]

The critical question for every man and for every philosopher then is: “Who (or what) is your criterion of the good and the true? Who (or what) is the keeper of your conscience? In short, who (or what) is your god?” For the inescapable fact about homo sapiens is that every man has his god (though most of us probably have polytheistic, and therefore schizoid tendencies). Consequently whatever a man considers to be sapienta will depend upon who (or what) his god is. This accounts for the fact that the dearest truths of western science are regarded as illusion in many parts of the Orient.

2.  God. The immediate spectre raised by the foregoing analysis is that of complete relativism both in ethics and in knowledge. The reply is that, however distressing it may be, there does in fact exist a multiplicity of views as to the good and the real, and that the present theory at least has the merit of accounting for this diversity. But beyond this defensive reply, can it further sketch any positive criterion which might help distinguish between the various “gods,” on the one hand, and the one true God, on the other? As a preliminary indication of what such a study in “comparative idolatry” might comprise, it is suggested to begin with that any and all of these gods can be detected as idols if they do not have at least the same freedom as man himself. For in that case, they are in fact merely tools in the hands of the “worshipper,” to be retained only so long as they serve his purposes just as the first images of the Buddha to be introduced into Japan were put on trial to see if they could alleviate the plague, when the plague became worse, they were unceremoniously dumped into the canal.

This is the true status of any “god” who is not himself a center of will. He is a sounding board for the whims and fancies of the worshipper. In order really to be God, and not simply appear to be such owing to a show of obeisance, he would have to be able to say “no” to man. No words on this score are more forceful than those with which Deutero-Isaiah culminates his famous passage on the fultility of the idolater: “He feedeth on ashes; a deceived heart hath turned him aside, that he cannot deliver his soul, nor say, ‘Is there not a lie in my right hand?'” A lie, because the idol and I enter into a compact of deceit: I agree to elevate the idol to a false divinity, if it in turn will give divine sanction to my ambitions. An idol is to be detected by this double duplicity. The only kind of God whose strings I ultimately cannot pull from behind the scenes is a God with a free will of his own, who can, if necessary, say “no” to me. And this means that God must be conceived as singular, for a decision is never abstract entity; it is always a decision by someone. To put it differently, the “freedom” in which a decision is made cannot be an abstract entity; rather, it would avoid misunderstanding to refer, not to freedom (which might connote an abstraction like “freedom-in-general,” Freiheit), but rather to free agents. In short, God is a Being besides others (one of the superficial parallels with the cosmological approach).

The most appropriate word for such a God is the word “Person.” Do not the doctrine of the imago dei and the Incarnation proclaim from the housetops that veritas is not esse, but rather a Person (“I am the truth”)? Nevertheless, many people have understandably become suspicious of the word “person,” as it has so been used idolatrously itself. Whatever better word might be used, there is one further question directed to those who prefer to speak of the “super-personal”: What distinction can be made between super– and sub-personal? Such a distinction will prove exceedingly difficult to state.

On this basis, one could say that primitive religion, with its anthropomorphic gods, is more profound than is often realized. Primitive man knows what God would have to be like in order really to be God. His is the history of the attempt to bring his anthropomorphic creations to life. Knowing that only a living God could be more than a mere idol, but failing to encounter such a God, he fills the vacuum with what he imagines to be facsimiles of Him. Beyond the simple and profound suspicion that such a God exists, he is at the end of his knowledge (“…whom ye ignorantly worship…”). In what way, then, can man attain a more determinate knowledge of God? In the same way in which he learns about another person: by what the other says and does. The initiative lies with the other. Therefore if man were to know anything about such a God, he would have to ask whether He had said or done anything. In this mood he might turn with greater seriousness than before to a book purporting to be a record of the “word and the mighty acts of God.”

3.  The fulfillment of freedom. One apparent stumbling block in the foregoing analysis of freedom now requires recognition: on the one hand, freedom involves a relation beyond the self, “responsibility to,” but on the other hand, it is precisely such a relation, indeed any “relatedness” at all, which has generally been regarded as fatal to freedom! For logically, anything beyond myself to which I am in any way related constitutes a limitation on my freedom. In Spinoza’s more formal phraseology, “Determination is negation.” Hence most religions, in order to conceive of God as completely “free,” have regarded Him as completely unrelated, unconditioned, “absolute.” And, since any ethic is based upon imitation of whatever functions as “god” for the particular philosopher, most ethics have accordingly aimed at as close an approximation as possible to the divine “unrelatedness.” In terms of the present argument, this means that God is in fact deprived of freedom as above analyzed, and that human freedom is turned against itself; for if its very structure entails a relation beyond, then the striving after “unrelatedness” is self-destructive.

One does have to take seriously, however, the complaint that an external relation can be a frustrating limitation on one’s own freedom. Who has not experienced this? Once again, however, the wisdom of the Bible is almost uncanny. It never advocates the self-contradictory attempt at “unrelatedness.” At the same time, it is fully aware that an external relation does indeed constitute a strait-jacket as long as it is a law, a principle, science, art, or anything impersonal. That is, it knows that all idols, in return for sanctioning the ambitions of the worshipper, at the same time bind him hand and foot in a miserable slavery. But it maintains further that there is one kind of external reference which not only avoids this tyranny, but actually (and however contrary to the expectations of logic) fulfills freedom, namely, another “center of freedom,” another person, in the special relation of agape. This means that “the real” consists of “selves” and their inter-relations, whose fulfillment, indeed, is nothing less than life itself. “We know that we have passed from death unto life because we love the brethren.”

Not that this kind of love is wholly unknown outside the Church, but here it can become normative, because here it has become available. For neither outside the Church nor inside it is this agape (to which we all so readily give lip service) a simple attainment. Indeed, the very “persons” between whom alone such a relation is even possible are often the worst tyrants of all, perhaps even while mouthing the words of love. In short, this agape, in which freedom is fulfilled, is not ours to command, or to achieve by taking thought. How, then, does one ever begin to love? By first being loved from beyond oneself. But who is to do this, since my neighbor is in no better way than I? This is par excellence, a “good question.” It recognizes that men in their freedom are doomed to a vicious circle of perpetual slavery-to their idols, to themselves, to each other – unless the same thing happens to them which enabled St. John to say, “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us.”

4.  Certainty, doubt, and faith. Another point at which a “Biblical metaphysic” differs from the ontological approach (and superfically resembles the cosmological) is the role of certainty as opposed to faith. Since the drive for certainty is the impetus which impels the ontological philosophy to postulate the identity of subject and object, it is difficult to see how the word “faith” could find a place in such a system. Even when a “risk of faith” is spoken of, “it is based on a foundation which is not risk: the awareness of the unconditional element.” By contrast in the realm of relations between free agents, this same certainty has a positively destructive effect! If, for example, one says, “I trust Jones to do it,” the affirmation is a compliment to Jones. If, on the other hand, one says, “Jones’ psychological and environmental conditioning is such that he will necessarily do it, and could not possibly do otherwise,” Jones is no longer complimented. The same applies to human relations in general. Try to make someone prove his love, and you destroy it. Apply science too completely to human relations, and you poison them, as the Communists have done. The realm of relations between man and man, between man and God, being the realm of relations between free agents, is preeminently the sphere in which the demand for certainty, since it implies necessity and therefore the negation of freedom, is an insult. On the contrary, this is the realm of faith, in the sense of “trust in Someone,” based on acquaintance and on what He has already done.

On the other hand, if the drive for certainty is thus destructive in the personal realm (as Kierkegaard seems to realize in his praise of “indirect communication”), the same is no less true of doubt. Here again the difference from the “perennial philosophy” is pronounced. For the ontological philosophy is not disturbed by doubt. Thus Tillich: “The profoundest doubt could not undermine the presupposition of doubt, the awareness of something unconditioned.” By contrast, Christ’s constant reproach is “ye of little faith.” Likewise the prayer of the Christian is “Help thou mine unbelief.”