Is there such a thing as a Christian philosophy of religion? And if so, in what relation does it stand to other philosophies? This recurring pair of questions has received especially trenchant and cogent treatment by Professor Paul Tillich in his widely reprinted article, "Two Types of Philosophy of Religion" (Union Seminary Quarterly Review, March, 1946, to which the following citations refers unless otherwise specified). According to his thesis, all philosophy of religion may be reduced to two fundamental types: the ontological, represented by the mystical tradition, including parts of Augustine, and based upon an underlying point of identity between man and God, and the cosmological, represented by Aquinas and most subsequent religious thought, and based upon the discrete, separate coexistence of men and of God. "On the first way, man discovers himself when he discovers God; he discovers something that is identical with himself.... On the second way, man meets a stranger when he meets God." Subjecting both types to searching analysis, and disclosing convincingly the inadequacies of the second, Professor Tillich concludes that the ontological, as the only remaining alternative, is the valid philosophy of religion, and he devotes most of the article to a vindication of it.
Taking as its point of departure his classic exposition of the arguments for an alliance between religion and traditional ontology, this present article poses three further questions on this subject: (1) Does the ontological approach provide an adequate metaphysical framework for the fundamental conceptions of Christianity? (2) If not, then are Christianity and philosophy irreconcilably at war with one another, or is there in fact a third alternative besides the other two types of philosophy of religion? (3) If there is such a third way, can it commend itself independently on strictly philosophical grounds?
For present purposes, the significant question is, "Why has it been unable to make up its mind?" Many, indeed most, other religions, as distinct from the Christian religion (a distinction not drawn in the article), have not so oscillated. On the contrary, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism all have been founded upon the ontological type, and have shown no inclination to depart from it. That Christian theology has in fact departed from it, and has condemned it in its most consistent form, is at least ground for suspicion of a certain incompatibility between the two. It is the present contention that each of the two types of philosophy of religion provides a metaphysical ground for some aspects of Christianity, and yet, on the other hand, that each also precludes certain other equally important aspects. Consequently, Christian theology has been obliged to shuttle back and forth between two positions (or to mix the two in varying proportions, as Professor Tillich so clearly shows), each of which appeals primarily by supplying some of the deficiencies of the other.
To carry the inner logic of ontological thinking to its final conclusion, it is evident that if the situation of identity does not in fact exist already, then it could never be achieved by any process or any effort whatever (this is the ground on which the mystic decries "works"), for the successive steps in any such process would themselves have to be certain. Thus the certainty which is goal of the process is actually presupposed at every step. Every act of cognition, indeed every mental activity whatever, presupposes the very certainty which is its goal. Even doubt itself rests on this presupposition, and Professor Tillich, in keeping with other representatives of the ontological school, holds that "the Absolute is affirmed by the very act of doubt."
Considered in isolation, this argument appears watertight. So compelling is it that it has only very rarely been challenged on strictly philosophical (i.e., logical) grounds. Aldous Huxley rightly calls it the "prerennial philosophy," for wherever and whenever man has transferred the principles of logical implication to reality itself, he has arrived at these "perennial" conclusions, from the Upanishads to the present day. Reduced to its simplest form, this kind of thinking merely recapitulates the ancient philosophical discussion concerning the-one-and-the-many. Is ultimate reality one, or is it plural? The ontological approach corresponds with the Eleatic position in affirming that reality is One (identity of subject and object), and that all plurality is illusory. The cosmological approach corresponds to the position of Democritus that plurality is not illusory, that it is impossible logically to derive plurality from unity, and that therefore reality itself is plural. It is worth noting that while the first position relies exclusively on logic, the second introduces an element of common sense: "Plurality (and motion) must be real, therefore...."
In the debate between the two schools, in so far as the issue is joined on the level of logic, the Eleatics ancient and modern will always have the upper hand. As often as Zeno's paradoxes are refuted by actual experience, they are re-established by logic. The mistake of pluralists, whether Democritean or more empirical, has been to allow their adversary to choose the weapon. For the most fundamental issue is not: "Which school is more logical?" but "What do we accept as our criterion of the truth - logic, or other aspects of experience?" Adherents of the ontological school have decided in favor of logic. As Professor Tillich puts it, the one reality "is the prius of everything that has being. It precedes all special contents, logically and ontologically" (my italics). Again: "Every logical structure which is more than merely a play with possible relations is rooted in an ontological structure" (Systematic Theology, I, p.187.).
Adherents of the ontological position, seeing the threat to all thinking and to all communication if logic is denied, have decided that the formal principles of logic shall be normative for reality itself. Secure though they appear in their castle of logic, and supreme though they reign in the history of philosophy, they have an Achilles heel which awaits attack from a third type of philosophy of religion. For their decision to allow logic to dictate to reality can be shown itself to involve a logical contradiction.
So much for the inadequacies of the ontological approach as a Christian philosophy of religion. If the cosmological approach remedies some of them it does not remedy all, and furthermore it has deficiencies of its own to which Professor Tillich has called attention. Nevertheless, it is understandable that there have been Protestants of most denominations who have been attracted to Thomism, if for no other reason than that they detect the grave difficulties of attempting to wed the "perennial philosophy" to Christianity and have no available alternative.
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.
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.
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."
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."
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."
Nevertheless Goliath is not unassailable. As already suggested, his vulnerable spot consists in the fact that the ontological approach, and indeed any philosophy, depends for its existence upon a prior decision as to what is real. Nowhere is this more vividly illustrated than in the preceding discussion concerning Eleatics and pluralists, where it was shown that whatever evidence one accepts, whether that of experience or that of logic, will depend upon neither logic nor experience alone, but upon a decision by the individual concerned in favor of the one or the other. And it is precisely this decision, upon which any knowledge is finally dependent, which neither the ontological nor most other philosophies have taken into account. For if a philosophy presupposes a decision, then, in order to avoid contradiction, it must be able to account for the existence of such a decision; that is, for the existence of the individuals who alone can make them. But this is precisely what the ontological approach fails to do. Ultimately it knows of no discrete individuals, but only Being. Thus the ontological approach implicitly presupposes the very thing which it explicitly denies. There could be no ontological approach indeed, no philosophy at all apart from the free decision of the philosopher. Therefore this type of philosophy of religion conceals a fundamental contradiction at its very heart.
Another way of putting the same point is to say that knowledge depends upon the freedom to distinguish truth from falsehood. If I am not free to make this distinction, then knowledge is impossible. All statements are then equally true and equally false; or, more accurately, it is no longer possible to speak of "true" and "false" at all, but only of statements - period. In other words, all knowledge presupposes freedom, the freedom to distinguish true from false. Veritas presupposes freedom; therefore veritas may not exclude the free agent; therefore veritas is not identical with esse in its traditional sense. Consequently any philosophy which equates veritas with esse may be expected to exhibit tell-tale symptoms of the deep-seated contradiction on which it rests. That such symptoms are not lacking in the ontological philosophy is indicated by the following three illustrations.
These are some of the strictly philosophical points at which a Biblical metaphysic, however incredibly, is able to pose some embarrassing questions to the "perennial philosophy." Though the further development of such a metaphysic would require a great deal of theological enterprise and effort, the prospects are sufficiently promising, and the goal sufficiently enticing, to lend encouragement to the dozens who have already broken ground in this direction. If their efforts are finally crowned with success, Christian theology may be spared another 2000 years of unsatisfactory oscillation between ontological and cosmological philosophies. Instead, when the theologian is asked whether he affirms a particular point on Biblical or on philosophical grounds, he will be able to show in reply what the doctrine of creation has all along maintained - that the truth of revelation is also the truth for philosophy.
[1] From THEOLOGY TODAY, vol. IX, No. 3 (Oct. 1952): pp. 360-375.
[2] The meaning of this Biblical insight for contemporary thinking is simply that freedom cannot be, as the Existentialists would have it, totally lacking in structure, or "meontic" (Berdyaev). For to eliminate structure altogether is to preclude the possibility of a criterion; and this, in turn, results in the abolition of decision, and consequently of freedom itself. This is the chief obstacle to current attempts to equate freedom with the irrational, to reduce the "Hebraic" to the "Dionysian."