The House We Live in; 5; Paul Tillich

Aye-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a! man, man's guard. The world between in this post-atomic age. Ian McArg at the University of Pennsylvania to these areas, for his guest today, author and theologian, Dr. Paul Tillick. Dr. Paul Tillick is a very great honor to have you here. I think your presence here can be assumed to be a testament to the importance of this subject. The subject, as you know, is the house we live in, a concern for man and his environment. I am especially delighted that you are here because you can deal for me with a, you can deal for me. You can treat for me rather an important personal problem. As a Scotsman, the Presbyterian, I was raised to a view of man's relation to nature,

which was, I think, characterized by a homocentric man in the egocentric universe. The sense that man exclusively was made in the image of God, given dominion of our birth, beasts, every creeping thing that creepeth, and in joy and to subdue the earth. As a landscape architect and a city planner, I have developed a somewhat different view that the cosmos has an order, the man participates in this order, that he is uniquely gifted, but he is a participant. What concerns me most as an individual is that the homocentric view has so little restraint to Western man, now post-atomic man in part of the trial life. I am enormously interested that he who discourse on this subject, Dr. Kelly. I'm very glad that I can speak in this wonderful program. I know it from your letters, and I think it's really worthwhile. As far as I understand you, I am supposed to represent the view of Christianity after the view of other religions have been or will be represented.

Now, I must confess, this is difficult for me because as a Protestant theologian, I am not able to give a very, very defined definition or attitude of Christianity, in my case, Protestantism, to anything, because belongs to the character of Protestantism, that the Protestant theologian is free to interpret the Christian message, to every new generation and every new period of history, so that the people in this period and in this generation can understand it. And of course, this gives more weight to my personal conviction than it probably is the case in some other religions. So, this is my warning to you to take this somehow in account.

Now, the first thing I understand in which you are interested is the relation of God and the world as expressed in Christian symbols. But I think the most important symbols here are creation and consummation. God, in the beginning and God, in the end, or as it is said, God, the alpha, the first letter of the alpha bit, and God, the omega, the last letter of the alpha bit. Now, the symbol of creation, first of all, it's important that we are clear that both creation and consummation are symbols. This means they are not descriptions of events which happened once upon a time and will happen once upon a time. But they express something quite different. Creation expresses the fact that we are creatures.

And that means that we are finite, that we are come from nothing and go to nothing. But that we are, at the same time, hold in the hands of the eternal, beyond time. And therefore, not dependent on the time before we lift and the time which will come after we die. But in every moment of our life and beyond any time, past and future, we are in the hands of the eternal. And this is the other side of the symbol of creation that here and now in this house in which we live, namely the universe. We are with the universe together in the hands or rooted in an eternal ground of everything, what is.

Now, this is for me the main meaning of the doctrine of creation. And it is a pity that so often this great symbol has been understood as a non symbolic scientific statement that some highest being called God has created the world 6,000 years ago or 5 billion years ago that doesn't make a difference. It's not such a statement, it's a statement that I am creature and that is creature in the hands of the creative ground beyond any time. Now that's the main point I wanted to make about this symbol. Now, consummation has the same character. It does not mean that sometime in the future, perhaps in the year 7, 2018, something will happen with dramatic character, with clouds and fire. But it means that we are living in our going ahead thoughts, deaths, always at the same time, thoughts, the eternal and not to another time after our life.

That's again a very fundamental understanding of the Christian message and I think a good understanding. So that means when we ask for our origin, it's in a two sense we can answer it. It's with our birth, but it's beyond our birth in the eternal ground of everything which makes our birth into this house we live in possible. And the same with the end. The end is not the time and perhaps no organic life on earth is possible anymore, but eternity to which we go is beyond organic or non-organic possibilities on earth, it is the eternal. Now that's about what I think about the meaning of transcendence and I will make this point very clear.

I don't think about two worlds, one world here and another world somewhere up in a meteorological place. But I believe that the ultimate ground of being the divine is present here and now and that always out of eternity time is created and ended. Dr. Tillich, within this view of transcendence there is however a special place for man in the universe. Yes, very special. Please, I think you will lead to the fact that he is called the image of God. Now this is also a half symbolic term and many people have taught about what that could mean. But it's much better we look at what man really is in difference to all the other beings. And there we find that he is able to look at things from outside to recognize them, to analyze them and to put them together again in technical activities.

He can know reality and he can change reality. And this double attitude is expressed in one very important thing man has namely language. That being which has language is able to go beyond the given situation. Animals are not, they are bound to the given situation. They do what they are driven to by their desires, instincts, attitudes. But man is able to stop to think. He has a freedom to ask question.

He has a freedom to receive commands for instance from his conscience. And is able to follow them or to reject them. In other words, man has that central position which makes his greatness amongst all creatures we know. Of course his greatness also is his danger because he can use his freedom in order to contradict himself. Man against himself is one of the famous words which we can often use. And then if he acts against himself then he is estranged from himself. And he comes into things and actions which are self-destructive. Now this man is the being which lives as a central reality in the house we live in. And of this being I think we should talk when we talk to our relationship to nature.

However this position, this unique position does not really give him the right to be a destructive agent. Now this brings me to the question how is the relationship of this being man to nature, let's say. And my answer is there are two possibilities. Because he is free from nature at least in one part of his, on side of his being. He is able to control nature. And this is of course what in biblical story of the first book of the Bible is expressed. But at the same time he is able to participate in nature. And we can say that there are two main attitudes always through history.

Men controlling nature and men participating in nature. And our whole situation today is determined by the conflict of these two attitudes. Yes, then they become very very critical ones too. This western man, post atomic man is a part of the trial life. In the sense that he, in so far as he believes himself to be participant there are restraints upon him. The extent of what he believes he is only a controller, there seems to be a little or no restraint upon him. So would you like to discuss the father in this subject historically, historical, Christian Protestant Christian views? Yes, now we find in the biblical literature everywhere the controlling attitude. We find it in the works of God in Genesis. We find it in Paul.

When he says God doesn't care for the oxen, we find it in the order to do agriculture, to plant the garden. His God says to Adam, and after he has been expelled, he is ordered to till the land and to weed out the weeds. And there is much of this kind of controlling attitude in the Bible, but I would say there is equally strong. The other attitude, the participating attitude, we can say even if men is asked to deal with nature, to take care of them. There is something more implied than controlling them. There is implied also to take care of them as for instance in the story of the Ark of Noah. All the animals are taken care of against the destructiveness of the flood.

And we have in the arms for instance, many beautiful arms in which obviously a participation in nature is expressed in a grandiose way. And I can jump now immediately to our time where we have the hymns in the churches which are full of admiration of nature and admiration of God through nature. Let me go on a little more in the Bible. We have in the same Paul who said this harsh word does God care for the oxen. He has a wonderful word in Romans 8 where he speaks of all creatures, toiling and sighing and suffering under the curse of vanity of emptiness of meaninglessness. And the same animals and all creatures longing for the revelation of the salvation.

He has a very intimate feeling for nature in this same man Paul, outspoken and he feels how much tragedy is also in nature and not only a man. And then finally in the symbols of the end, the transformation in the heavenly Jerusalem for instance, as in many Christian beautiful pictures which is painted in hymns. We have even the material, the inner organic elements of nature, but all these precious ones. We have gold and pearls and noble stones and all this. And we have also the animals which are pictures of beautiful in the mosaics and Christ is on the throne and the animals around him. So there is an idea of the participation of nature and also of the participation of nature in our history. And the great drama of creation, fall and salvation, all nature participates in this.

Also on the other hand, the Bible knows that man controls nature. Now this is one part of the historical development. No, I wondered for this point you felt that this new view, re-examination of the Bible to find attitudes to environment as opposed to attitudes between man and man. This attitude had developed in romanticism. This is a comparatively new. Yes, now I wanted to bring in anyhow, Francis of Assisi, who is one of the later medieval Christians who preach to the animals. And who called son and moon, brother and sister, who follows an earlier trend where the saints who are supposed to be in a state of salvation are friends with the animals again, because the animals were friends of his men in the paradise. So this is a long tradition. And then it goes through the Renaissance where men fought completely into nature.

He is himself a part of nature. So in the beginning still the central part later on, only on the pictures you can see that always best. So I wonder if this is the only realm of which I can discuss with you in equal terms. I've always sensed that the gardens of the Renaissance were really attempts by an arrogant man to make a human pattern on a reluctant landscape. And they were bad nature, surely they could not survive, say for maintenance. I think they were also bad art. And I think they were very imperfect views of paradise. I have the sense that only the first view of nature as an acceptable enchanting, as a matter of fact, a million for life was the 18th century view, particularly in England. Have you any sense of being a theological philosophical correspondence between views of nature, breaking point between the Renaissance view and 17th century and the view of the 18th century, the romantic view? I saw in the Brussels exhibition gardens, one Renaissance garden, which I dislike as much as you do, and then a baroque garden, which I like much more, the 18th century, the Rocco garden.

But even those are still very much made men like. And only in the late, well, the 18th century, they are the informal gardens appear. And I think this means, and then in the history of painting, we find that already in some pictures of the late Renaissance, men is on the site, he is not in the centre anymore. And in the famous paintings, and so he is a figure in nature, but nature is the all-embracing power. So this is a very important part, but now let me perhaps come to the other question. Before going into the problem of romanticism, I would like to go back to the Reformation, in the Reformation, two different types of Protestantism developed.

The one in the Middle European Protestantism, especially Germany and the Nordic countries, which where I would say that the feeling of participation is still very strong. While in the Calvinist group, which is more Western Europe and then America, of course, we have the controlling attitude as a predominant. This can be expressed eologically in two central symbols. For rutornism, one can say the sacramental presence. That means, the holy is here and now you can find it. In a special place, in space and time, you have it, you don't need to produce it. In Calvinism, there is much more the kingdom of God as a central symbol.

And kingdom is a controlling word in itself. The symbol comes from the realm of the kings who rule. And so, God rules. And he rules nature through men. And men prepares nature, transforms it, makes his purpose, the purpose of nature. And all this is done in Calvinistic thinking on the basis that through men, God fulfills his purpose with nature. Now, these are two rather different points of view. Of course, both are protestants and both have biblical ground. But I would say the one can be brought under the concept of participation in the Lutheran here and now is the Holy. And the other under the concept of controlling and transforming reality. This is the Calvinist.

And I see very clearly what I've been objecting to is the Calvinism and this aspect of Calvinism, my own heritage. And this is a very dangerous view indeed. The view is dangerous or Calvinism. I think this view within Calvinism is a very dangerous view. Yes. Because we, in fact, haven't the restraints upon ourselves to exercise adequate control. We don't have the wit of the knowledge. In fact, to manipulate nature, it is vastly more complex than our mechanisms for appreciating it. And we can see the catechism may be a product of an assumption that we can control it. Yes, exactly. And now, after the more religious forms of this conflict have gone away, we have it now in our period. Between, let's call it, the technical controlling attitude, which has found its greatest expression in the last 50 years perhaps. And on the other hand, the Romantic, which comes from in one head of its wings, John Romanticism, from the Lutheran tradition.

It has other roots. Now, in Romanticism, the here and now has in itself the divine in some way. In the other, in the industrial society attitude, everything is always a matter of purpose. We must work for it. It must come to us. We must create it. We must produce it. And in this way, something has happened, which I would say that it is indeed, I agree fully with you, the danger of our time. And the question is, whether we have success, when we tell our people, what I do all the time with my students, we must have a participating attitude towards nature. I try to come to this partly through the visual arts, partly through the ethical problem of our encounter with other beings, we cannot make everything into tools of our meaning. Then, and this is a real danger, which of which you spoke, something happens, namely it happens, that we are made into tools ourselves.

Men becomes himself a tool. If he makes everything else into a tool, then the world of tools, the world which men has created above the given reality, his technical abilities, puts himself into its service. And now, men is already largely a slave of that which he has created. So, for me, an enormous area of illumination comes from the discoveries of the ecologist. In the view of the biologist, the botanist, and particularly the ecologist, there only is participation. In his view, the man has the ecological significance of a bear. That there is this conjunction of the microorganisms of the soil, the inept materials, sun, star, wind, reptiles, amphibians, mammals, man, exist in one system.

And no one organism is unique. There is interdependent seems to be the key. And this has full reinforcement in your view of participation. It's one with which I have enormous sympathy. But I warned you about the difficulty. We are really in the opposite trend now. And the romantic attack has already spent much of its original push in the beginning of the 19th century, 20th century has dismissed it partly. But there is always a renewal of some of these elements. For instance, I would feel that some of the modern art, since the sun, since 1900, really tries to go into the deeper levels of nature one more. And cross without full success, religion tries it. In the ethical teaching, we try it. We try to use a principle of love, which is the ultimate principle for all attics.

And this is a form of love to do this nature in the way in which we would like it. But, and this is the question which I must end. Well, I am enormously grateful to you for this discourse. I found a very enlightening one, and I thank you very much. Dr. Paul Tillich. Dr. Paul J. Tillich, professor of systematic theology of the Harvard Divinity School, and author of many books, among them the courage to be and dynamics of faith. Ian McCarg is chairman of the Department of Landscape Architecture of the University of Pennsylvania, a landscape architect and a city planner. This is N-E-T National Educational Television.

Thank you.