Christianity and the Encounter of the World Religions.

Rating:
Summary: Full of interesting ideas.
Review: This is my first direct aquaintance with Paul Tillich. I found this book extremely thoughtful and interesting. It is quite short, just ninety pages or so, but concentrated: on dwarf stars, you get more matter per teaspoon than in a herd of elephants; so here with abstract thought, compressed and weighty compared to more glib discussions. The book is not hard to read, however.

Tillich argues as follows. First, he defines religion and "quasi-religions" such as liberal humanism and Marxism: "the state of being grasped by an ultimate concern . . . " He differentiates "religions of the spirit," such as original Christianity, Buddhism, and liberalism, from "legally organized religions," such as Medieval Catholicism, Islam, and later secular faiths. He fairly and, I think, accurately differentiates between the kind of discrimination between faiths that follows from an affirmation of the truth of one's own, from various forms of more absolute denial. He follows this question through Christian history in an interesting way, arguing that the dominant Christian approach is not to absolutely repudiate non-Christian beliefs, as is commonly thought. "They did not reject them unambiguously and of course they did not accept them unambiguously . . . they acknowledged the preparatory character of these religions and tried to show how their inner dynamics" should send pagans to Christ. I have been studying this question for some years, and while I believe in God and the whole nine yards, and I'm not sure exactly what Tillich believed, I think on this point he was quite right, and insightful. (Like the Church fathers ,I havegone further and suggested in my books -- Jesus and the Religions of Man, True Son of Heaven: How Jesus Fulfills the Chinese Culture -- that God in some way seems to have prepared world cultures for the Gospel.) Tillich traces the various competing solutions to the question of how Christianity relates to other faiths to modern times, and his own contemporaries. He offers names, but few details.

Another point that Tillich emphasizes is that "religions of the spirit" tend to lose their character when they come into contact with more authoritarian beliefs, not so much because they lose the military contest, as that they "fight fire with fire," and become too much like their opponents. His examples here are Islam and Communism. I think he is right that that is a danger, though I don't think the danger is absolute, or that it may never be necessary in fact to take up arms in defense of a free society. But he puts the problem well.

In the following chapter, Tillich discusses the encounter between Christianity and Buddhism. I think he underestimates the success of Christian missions and overestimates the importance of Buddhism to East Asian cultures (on art, for example). But that is a part of his tendancy to speak in big generalizations.

Tillich closes with a chapter called "Christianity judging itself in the light of its encounter with the World Religions." Here he speaks of Christianity as the "negation of religion," and of Christ as a "symbol." He suggests a hope that Christianity will become, rather than an independent, self-enclosed religion, a "center of crystallization for all positive religious elements after they have been subjected to the criteria implied in this center." I agree with the general concept, though I am not sure I agree with what Tillich sees as the "center" of Christian faith. (I am also skeptical about the "wisdom" with which Tillich claims in this chapter that Islam has dealt with "primitive peoples." See V. S. Naiphaul.) Tillich argues "not conversion, but dialogue." Then on the very last page, when I'm hoping he will explain what he thinks people should base future faith upon, Tillich peters out into rather confused metaphors about the "depths" of a religion, a "point" of time that "breaks through (the) particularity" of a given religion and "elevates" it to freedom. I'm not at all sure what he means by that. But there are many interesting thoughts in this grand sweep of a little book, and I found it well worth reading.

Rating:
Summary: Full of interesting ideas.
Review: This is my first direct aquaintance with Paul Tillich. I found this book extremely thoughtful and interesting. It is quite short, just ninety pages or so, but concentrated: on dwarf stars, you get more matter per teaspoon than in a herd of elephants; so here with abstract thought, compressed and weighty compared to more glib discussions. The book is not hard to read, however.

Tillich argues as follows. First, he defines religion and "quasi-religions" such as liberal humanism and Marxism: "the state of being grasped by an ultimate concern . . . " He differentiates "religions of the spirit," such as original Christianity, Buddhism, and liberalism, from "legally organized religions," such as Medieval Catholicism, Islam, and later secular faiths. He fairly and, I think, accurately differentiates between the kind of discrimination between faiths that follows from an affirmation of the truth of one's own, from various forms of more absolute denial. He follows this question through Christian history in an interesting way, arguing that the dominant Christian approach is not to absolutely repudiate non-Christian beliefs, as is commonly thought. "They did not reject them unambiguously and of course they did not accept them unambiguously . . . they acknowledged the preparatory character of these religions and tried to show how their inner dynamics" should send pagans to Christ. I have been studying this question for some years, and while I believe in God and the whole nine yards, and I'm not sure exactly what Tillich believed, I think on this point he was quite right, and insightful. (Like the Church fathers ,I havegone further and suggested in my books -- Jesus and the Religions of Man, True Son of Heaven: How Jesus Fulfills the Chinese Culture -- that God in some way seems to have prepared world cultures for the Gospel.) Tillich traces the various competing solutions to the question of how Christianity relates to other faiths to modern times, and his own contemporaries. He offers names, but few details.

Another point that Tillich emphasizes is that "religions of the spirit" tend to lose their character when they come into contact with more authoritarian beliefs, not so much because they lose the military contest, as that they "fight fire with fire," and become too much like their opponents. His examples here are Islam and Communism. I think he is right that that is a danger, though I don't think the danger is absolute, or that it may never be necessary in fact to take up arms in defense of a free society. But he puts the problem well.

In the following chapter, Tillich discusses the encounter between Christianity and Buddhism. I think he underestimates the success of Christian missions and overestimates the importance of Buddhism to East Asian cultures (on art, for example). But that is a part of his tendancy to speak in big generalizations.

Tillich closes with a chapter called "Christianity judging itself in the light of its encounter with the World Religions." Here he speaks of Christianity as the "negation of religion," and of Christ as a "symbol." He suggests a hope that Christianity will become, rather than an independent, self-enclosed religion, a "center of crystallization for all positive religious elements after they have been subjected to the criteria implied in this center." I agree with the general concept, though I am not sure I agree with what Tillich sees as the "center" of Christian faith. (I am also skeptical about the "wisdom" with which Tillich claims in this chapter that Islam has dealt with "primitive peoples." See V. S. Naiphaul.) Tillich argues "not conversion, but dialogue." Then on the very last page, when I'm hoping he will explain what he thinks people should base future faith upon, Tillich peters out into rather confused metaphors about the "depths" of a religion, a "point" of time that "breaks through (the) particularity" of a given religion and "elevates" it to freedom. I'm not at all sure what he means by that. But there are many interesting thoughts in this grand sweep of a little book, and I found it well worth reading.