Paul Tillich and Judaism: A Dialectic for the Inclined

Atheism is an overused and damaged signifier. If placed in front of Paul Tillich’s “fundamentalists” most of us would be considered heretical simply for espousing interpretations of traditional Religion that attempt to fit into a scientific world-view. The impulse to combine the ancient and the modern reveals a dialectical drive, but the desire for Religion still exists, and even the most humanistic and atheistic persons exhibit this desire. There is a sect called “Humanistic Judaism” that is unflinchingly atheistic, but even they join together to offer blessings. As a Jew, this seems to me embarrassingly short-sided (what is blessing, if not divine?), and I prefer a more philosophical approach to the problem of a Humanistic Religion--such as that offered by Paul Tillich.

My problem

My impulse is to praise Tillich for his attempt to reinterpret Protestant Christianity, but to see the faults inherent in any man’s attempt to reclassify the “meaning” of one’s actions without consulting the participants first. For this reason, his praise of Christianity seems like a cry for acceptance. And while his ultimate Theology seems to extend beyond the particularities of Protestantism, he retains the prejudices of the particular. There are numerous passages in Tillich where I feel the traditional aversion to Judaism coming to the surface, and for a Theology that espouses ultimate Universality, this seems doubly reprehensible.

For instance, in Tillich’s sermon “The New Being,” a very liberal address which contains something for a man of any faith, he claims:

There are the great religions beside Christianity: Hinduism,

Buddhism, Islam, and the remnants of classical Judaism; they

have their myths and their rites - so to speak, their

“circumcision” - which gives each of them their distinction. There are the secular movements: Fascism, Communism, Secular Humanism, and Ethical Idealism. These try to avoid myths and rites; they represent, so to speak, uncircumcision.

I just don’t know what to think of this passage. Why doesn’t he say “Judaism?” Instead, he says “the remnants of classical Judaism.” Could he be referring to the Holocaust, as he mentions Fascism in the next sentence? Does he mean that Judaism is not a “great religion” simply because there are less Jews than Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, and Muslims? If so, why does he say “Classical” Judaism? Classical Judaism may mean the Judaism of the Temple, but this is not practiced anymore and very different from Modern Judaism. Classical Judaism may also mean the Hellenized Judaism that Christianity grew out of. In this case, the “remnants” of classical Judaism would most likely be found in Christianity.

Most likely, since “The New Being” is about Paul, Tillich means Paul. In this case, the “remnants” of classical Judaism would be found in the Pauline letters of the New Testament, in which Paul, a Jewish Christian, attempts to convert Jews and Pagans. Could it be that Tillich’s Theology, which posits Being-Itself, no immortality of the soul, Universal salvation, etc. is still anti-Jewish on the grounds of the early Christians’ complaints of the Jews of Herod’s Temple? Is this Judaism for Tillich, as it is for so many Christians who caricature Judaism based on their reading of the “Old Testament,” and their formulation “the people of the book?”

Paul Tillich’s book Theology of Culture leads me even more strongly to this suggestion. In it, Tillich compares Christianity and Judaism, stressing the need for Christianity to retain some aspects of “the Synagogue.” By “the Synagogue,” it is clear that once again, Tillich is attempting to constitute some imaginary “Judaism,” that led dialectically to Christianity, from the (pre-Synogogue) prophets to the (early Synagogue) Paul.

Tillich writes that “The assembly of God, namely the Church which gathers from all nations, is the end of all religious nationalism and tribalism.”1 This seems like a useful statement, as it affirms notions of both traditional Christianity and Tillich’s Universalism. However, he then stresses that, despite the formation of the Church, the “prophetic spirits of the synagogue” are still needed. Here he speaks of the “prophetic spirits of the synagogue,”as clearly distinct from the Temple. He means the dissent of Jesus, his followers, and eventually Paul, and the transformation of the Synagogue to the Church. Once again, Tillich is appealing to a Romantic notion of “Classical Judaism” as a kind of pinnacle, when his real referent is probably the image of Paul and Jesus, which can only be seen as “Classical Judaism” in a Christian perspective. Classical Judaism would never (from a Jewish perspective) be the same as Christianity.

Just as Christian tradition favors the reading of the “Old Testament” as a harbinger of Jesus, here Tillich appears to be reading “Classical Judaism” as a harbinger of the Church. Furthermore, Tillich goes on to say, “Synagogue and Church should be united in our age, in the struggle for the God of time against the gods of space.”[1]

Here, the most obvious connotation is that Judaism and Christianity should be united. But this is not what Tillich is saying. I doubt that he, a fierce opponent of Nazism, could be advocating this systematic destruction of Judaism, especially given his multiculturalism. He is talking about a fusion of his so-called “Classical Judaism” with “The Church,”--allowing “prophets” such as himself to effectively espouse their messages without fear of reprimand from the “Church,” just as Jesus is seen as the true Jew (“of the Synagogue”) and not the Temple authority. Implicit in this statement is a criticism of Catholicism, which he repeatedly denounces as “corruptible.”

A Possible Solution

If Tillich is in any way anti-Semitic, then perhaps it is part of his “theological circle.” It is problem faced by Protestantism since Martin Luther. I find it interesting that Tillich died in 1965, in the midst of Vatican II, and I wonder what he may of thought of the progressions of Catholicism. On the issue of Judaism, the Catholic church was officially stepping away from the traditional caricature of “the Jews,” and began having serious talks with the major branches of Judaism in an attempt to reach out and find common ground. Because Protestantism is so divided, there is no “corruptible” unified body to reach out. Ideally, for Tillich, it seems that the Institutional Religion cannot be thrown out or erased, but must be dealt with on one’s own terms. This seems paradoxical, since it is the Religious Institution that gives the Religion continued life and legitimacy, and keeps the symbols alive and meaningful. To divorce the symbols and the “theological circle” from the “circle of life” of continued obedience to the laws of the Religion, and more importantly, the practices and teachings of the Religion, is to deaden them as though anthropological signifiers for some great whole of humanity.

Due to the evidence I have found in the quoted sources, I believe that Paul Tillich’s seeming disdain for Judaism and Catholicism come from the same protestant impulse to distrust the “corruptible” institutions of Religion which give their followers false gods, and false beliefs in the name of God. For Tillich, this is the God totally divorced from Being-Itself, as revealed by the Trinity, and purpose of Religion in the world. However, just as Catholicism is a Symbol for a “corruptible institution,” it has proven that not all Religious Institutions are destined for corruption. Catholicism is a thriving Religion, not cut off at the knees from the time of Martin Luther, and so is Judaism, not aborted in utero by Paul. Both of these Religions grew and changed and created their own theological Circles, fostered by Institutions that acted sometimes progressive, sometimes reactionary. There is no reason, however, for a contemporary understanding of Judaism or Catholicism to be reduced to some reactionary past represented by “The Church.”

How does this all make sense for Judaism? In America, there are four major branches of the Religion-Orthodox, Conservative, Reform and Reconstructionist. Each has its own take on the relationship between the individual’s beliefs and the doctrines of the affiliation. In particular, the Reconstructionist movement emphasizes a subjective understanding of Jewish doctrine, and does not make the prohibitions that Orthodoxy does, although many Reconstructionists act in a fairly old-world Jewish manner. In this way, as Tillich seems intent on creating, the individual is able to move about freely within the Theological Circle of the Religious Institution without a fixed doctrinal belief of how to interpret the Religion. Multiple interpretations are available, all of which are seen as Jewish. Likewise, in the Reform movement, there is a tendency toward a subjective understanding of God and an emphasis on the group aspect of the Religious endeavor. It seems to me that the “spirit of Synagogue” Tillich associates with the time of Paul is still existent in the synagogue, not simply in the humanistic and philosophical impulses of his own Systematic Theology.

The history of Judaism is a history of debate, and includes prominent figures who each had a different conception of God. It may seem ironic, but Tillich’s notion of God as Being Itself would be less heretical within the framework of a Jewish system, which does not choose to define God, freedom, or immortality as strictly as Christian systems, but rather allows debate on these issues. Even the most Orthodox branches of Judaism, though rather rigorously fixed on practice, and laws, place quite a bit of emphasis on personal understandings of God and mystical conceptions of the universe which generate worlds similar to Tillich’s positing of a God “above” God. God is understood in very abstract terms, but also as the force of life which penetrates all existence and experience--concrete as any human experience.

For these reasons, I believe that Tillich provides a useful way of looking at the Universe, but his negligence of Judaism is a great Irony. In another life, if Tillich had been born a Jew instead of a Christian, perhaps he would have found the “Spirit of the Synagogue” was in the Synagogue all along.