Nietzsche and Christ

...Tillich develops the relation between love, power and justice in a manner strongly reminiscent of the dialectic propounded by young Hegel, from which his theology of mediation is derived...

...Nor does Kierkegaard go beyond the limits set by Hegel...

...Existential philosophy (in all its varieties) superseded Marxism (in all its varieties) as the prevailing fashion...

...Tillich's theology was hailed by the American intelligentsia of the Forties and Fifties, not for its "socialist realism" but because it brought the various leitmotivs of existential philosophy — vacuum, dread, anxiety, courage, being and non-being—into a coherent system and opened the eyes of secularists to the religious roots of the existential vocabulary...

...After Tillich emigrated from Germany, he needed a period of orientation to adjust to American civilization...

...This small volume integrates Tillich's interest in psychology and sociology, and—if I am not mistaken—marks the beginning of a third period in his work...

...It bespeaks Tillich's insight that he saw the place of these problems in an age which takes refuge in orthodox scientific or orthodox ecclesiastical formulations...

...Hegel's dialectic, however, is ambiguous and lends itself to conservative as well as revolutionary interpretations...

...Justice by itself remains an abstract universal principle that inescapably does injustice to every concrete situation...

...The analysis of history is not made the explicit theme but implicitly connects the ontological analyses of the concepts of love, power and justice with their ethical applications...

...This theme dominated his work during the German period, but later gave way to questions concerning man's ultimate destiny as an individual...

...Reviewed by Jacob Taubes Lecturer in social philosophy, Harvard University Paul Tillich's theology centers around an analysis of the problem of history...

...But these biographical motivations do not suffice to explain the shift in Tillich's theology...

...Whereas the relation between love and justice is an old theme of Christian theology, the tension between power and justice was brought into bold relief only in the Marxist theory of the state...

...Whereas the Hegelians of the Left, together with Hegel, interpret the Christian consciousness as the unhappy, torn and estranged consciousness of man, Tillich sides with the theologians among Hegel's pupils (who constitute the "academic tradition' of Hegelianism) and interprets the secular consciousness as the estranged consciousness of man that should seek its ultimate reconciliation in the holy community...

...Therefore, love and power are usually contrasted in such a way that love is identified with the resignation of power and power with the denial of love...

...Tillich's tract proves that the split into left and right wings among Hegel's disciples is still the paramount event of philosophy and theology in the last hundred years...

...In the theology of the Middle Ages, it was expressed in the doctrine of atonement as developed by Anselm of Canterbury...

...The academic and literary schools of pragmatism and existentialism surely confirm this observation...

...Hence, justice is possible only if the state has withered away and been replaced by an administration without political power...

...For basically Nietzsche's "will to power" is a designation for the dynamic self-affirmation of life, which is also implied in the Christian concept of love that symbolizes the moving power of life...

...The tension between love and justice has been a perennial problem of Christian theology since St...

...The other alternative would be to deduce love, power and justice from the human situation, the historicity of man and his mortality...

...Such a society, he holds, implies an organization without a center of action and establishes only an agglomeration of individuals without a unified form of justice...

...It would be wrong to draw too sharp a line of demarcation between Tillich's earlier and later periods, for the problem of history was never entirely eclipsed in his thinking...

...Tillich's new book brings the problem of history once more into focus and continues the line of argument of his last German work, which appeared just before the Nazis took power...

...Tillich opposes both Marxism and Christian anarchism, which set up the ideal of a society without a power structure...

...The ontological insight that governs his doctrine implies that love must satisfy the requirements of justice in order to be real and that the laws of justice must unite with the principle of love in order to avoid the injustice of total destruction...

...He emphasizes the ontological role of the concept of love and goes far beyond the view of love as an emotional state...

...Life is not actual without the love which drives everything that is toward everything else that is...

...Whether he has solved the problems raised in his book is another matter, but he has stated them in a provocative and challenging manner...

...Disenchanted with a Utopia that had failed to fulfil its original promise, many intellectuals turned away from the external realm of politics and descended into the depths of the soul...

...The meaning of power has always been burdened with the ambiguity of the relation between power and force...

...The dialectic of his religious socialism was not immediately applicable to the American situation, since the role of the working class here differed greatly from its role in Central Europe...

...Marx asserted that the laws of the state are but the tools of a ruling class...

...It manifests its greatest power where it overcomes the greatest separation...

...The reasons for this shift from a theological interpretation of sociological patterns to a theological orchestration of psychological motifs are both personal and general...

...In recent discussions, Protestant theologians have pointed to the qualitative difference between eros and agape (earthly and heavenly love in Renaissance symbolism) and have gone to the extreme of denying any relation between these contradictory types of human experience...

...But it would be equally wrong to overlook the shift in emphasis from the social to the individual...

...He treats with great comprehension the interrelation of what he sees as the three elements that constitute man's history: love, power and justice...

...Tillich rightly insists that both eros and agape are present in every act of love...

...Love is the drive of power toward the unity of the separated...

...Perhaps only Nietzsche's philosophy represents a new spiritual stage which (despite almost five hundred books on Nietzsche) has not yet been explored or tested...

...Such an interpretation induced Nietzsche to put his idea of the "will to power" over and against the Christian idea of love and, conversely, led Christian theologians to reject Nietzsche's philosophy...

...The political and social structure of the United States, which has puzzled so many European analysts, must have posed some riddles for Tillich...

...Tillich brings into the open some of the intrinsic and relational problems concerning love, power and justice...

...Kierkegaard's and Kafka's solipsistic meditations on anxiety and nothingness drew the attention of a vanguard that had been unable to establish a society governed according to its precepts and planning...

...Immediately after the Second World War, a shift can be detected in the general orientation of the Western intelligentsia...

...His doctrine tried to achieve a balance between divine retributive justice and divine merciful love...

...Tillich goes so far as to propose a union between Nietzsche's philosophy and the ethics of the Sermon on the Mount...

...There was not the slightest chance of transferring the class concepts of European socialism to the American scene...

...In the split between Hegel's disciples into right and left wings, Tillich tends to the right when he sees "the divine life" as "the source of love, power and justice...

...Tillich insists that the basic formulas of power and of love are identical...