PAUL TILLICH’S ARGUMENTS FOR GOD’S REALITY*
Houston A. Craighead, Winthrop University
*Originally published in The Thomist, XXXIX, 2 (April, 1975), 309-318.
It
IS INTERESTING to notice that, although he vehemently denies that the question of God’s existence is a legitimate question, Paul Tillich does have arguments for God’s "reality." Tillich, of course, does not use the term "reality" here, but there must be some term to denote God’s ontological status in Tillich’s system. When Tillich speaks of something that "exists," he means something which is finite, is limited by the "categories of finitude" (time, space, substance, etc.). God, Tillich says, is most assuredly not this. God, he says, is being-itself.The purpose of this article is to show that such a ploy does not succeed for Tillich. Indeed, one can raise the question of the reality of being-itself. In fact, Tillich himself raises this question and gives at least two arguments to prove the reality of his God. The notion of non-being plays a central role for Tillich here. Hence, in this essay I shall explicate Tillich’s notion of non-being as an ontological power [1], and examine his arguments for God’s reality. In so doing I hope to show two things: (1) that Tillich does offer arguments for God’s reality; (2) that those arguments are not sound.
The notion of non-being says Tillich, has a long history in philosophy, beginning with Parmenides and continuing to Sartre and Heidegger [2]. There have, however, been two basic ways to try to avoid this notion.
Tillich distinguishes between two types of non-being by referring to the Greek distinction between meon and ouk on [8]. Meon is dialectical non-being. In Platonism meon was "that which does not yet have being but can become being if it is united with essences or ideas" [9]. It is the meontic "Matter" from which the demiurgos formed the world in Plato’s Timaeus. Ouk on, on the other hand, is the "nothing which has no relation to being" [10].
It is never exactly clear just what Tillich means by "non-being" when he uses it in his system. He definitely does want to speak of it as having ontological status, thus rejecting ouk on. However, he does not want it to be an independent reality over against God, thus rejecting meon. He states that the Christian doctrine of creatio ex nihilo is to be taken as creation out of ouk on [11]. What Tillich seems to do is combine some qualities of both concepts. He retains ouk on insofar as things are said to be threatened with the total loss of their being. But he retains meon in that his non-being is related to being. In fact, it is said to be "within" being.
For Tillich, the notion of non-being is part of a discussion of being, though such a discussion is of necessity symbolic. Actually the notion of "power" is the closest Tillich comes to saying anything literal about being-itself. Although it is symbolic or metaphorical to speak of being-itself as the "power of being" (the power by virtue of which things are rather than are not), this symbol seems to be Tillich’s favorite: "Being is the power of being" [12].
However, if being is spoken of as the power of being, something over which the power is proved is presupposed, says Tillich [13]. The problem is that everything participates in being (and, thus, in the power of being). So what is left to resist it? "What can be that which tries to negate being but is negated by it?" [14] The answer is non-being. As I said, such talk is symbolic. It touches, says Tillich, "the basic mystery of existence." Hence, any attempt to explain non-being will include terms which "bear in themselves the scars of non-being" [15]. That is, they will be paradoxical.
The reason non-being is able to resist being is that it is part of being. "Being ‘embraces’ itself and non-being" [16]. As part of being, non-being is eternally present and cannot be dispelled. It is, in fact, a necessary part of being. Without it being would be static and dead. However, if non-being is within being, how is it that it does not overcome being? Tillich’s answer is that being "logically precedes non-being" [17]. If non-being did overcome being then it would also overcome itself – it would have nothing to negate and, thus, would not be [18]. Thus, being and non-being require one another and cannot be separated. God is the power of being constantly overcoming non-being, which is part of being!
"Certainly one can describe being in terms of non-being; one can justify such a description by pointing to the astonishing prerational fact that there is something and not nothing. One could say that "being is the negation of the primordial night of nothingness." But in doing so one must realize that such an aboriginal nothing would be neither nothing nor something, that it becomes nothing only in contrast to something, in other words, that the ontological status of non-being is dependent on being" [19].
Now such remarks make for very rough sledding indeed! However, it would seem that Tillich is saying something like this: Non-being is not absolutely nothing at all. It is an ontological power, the power of negating what-is and of driving what-is on beyond itself or destroying it. As such, Tillich’s non-being is really not absolute nothingness; it is something. It has ontological status and, as such, is included within being. Were it not included within being it would not be at all. As included within being, non-being is manifest in all the things that are, that have being. Hence, the tendency of things to change and to die. Hence the anxiety of man, which we experience in terms of the categories of being and knowing [20].
In other words, Tillich is basically an ontological realist. He not only maintains the reality of essences as "powers of being" [21], but, beyond them, the reality of an ontological ground for the existence of beings and for the transitoriness and passing-awayness of beings. Not only are there essences as powers to make things what they are, there is also the Supreme Power of Being-Itself to provide things (as well as essences) their thatness. As such, this power includes within itself its own negation and overcomes it continually, thus giving a ground even to negation!
This is still not sufficiently clear. However, I think it can best be made clear if we see it now in light of Tillich’s own arguments for God’s reality. In his article "The Two Types of Philosophy of Religion" [22], Tillich examines the ontological and the cosmological approaches to God. Here he is not referring to these as arguments, but as approaches. The ontological approach, he says, is Augustinian. It is the way of overcoming estrangement. The cosmological approach is Thomist, and is the way of meeting a stranger.
On the ontological approach, which Tillich accepts, man is immediately aware of the unconditional and its reality cannot be inferred [23]. Tillich agrees with the Augustinian assertion that in doubt and the quest for truth, verum ipsum (truth itself) is presupposed. It is the norm of all approximations to truth [24]. Tillich also agrees with a point he claims Kant makes in his moral argument for God – that good acts presuppose bonum ipsum (the good itself). This is the norm for all approximations to goodness [25]. Further, both verum ipsum and bonum ipsum are manifestations of esse ipsum, being-itself, "the ground and abyss of everything that is" [26].
If, as Tillich says, "Veritas is God" [27] – or presupposes God – then God must be real. This is so, Tillich claims, because truth can be denied only in the name of truth; if there is no truth, then it is true that there is no truth, but that is itself a truth. Hence, it is impossible to deny truth – hence it is impossible to deny God [28].
Putting this another way, Tillich says that thought presupposes a unity of subject and object, else thought would have no content. This fundamental unity or ground of all thought, Tillich says, is God. In God, being and knowing are identical. Such a God "is a necessary thought because it is the ground of all thought" [29].
In short, Tillich maintains that man has a fundamental awareness of the Unconditioned, God, which involves his whole being. All of man’s thought and activity presupposes this fundamental element. "Man is immediately aware of something unconditional which is the prius of the separation and interaction of subject and object, theoretically as well as practically" [30].
Tillich attempts to explicate what he means here by "awareness." He says it is the "most neutral term," it avoids the connotations of "intuition," "experience," and "knowledge" [31].
It is not "intuition" because intuition (in the Kantian sense) has the character of a Gestalt. But the Unconditioned appears as "an element, a power, as demand" [32]. It is not "experience" because that connotes "the observed presence of one reality to another reality" [33]. The Unconditioned is not an object of observation. It is not "knowledge" because in knowledge the separation of subject and object is presupposed, and a theoretical act is implied. This is "just the opposite of awareness of the Unconditioned" [34]. This awareness is immediate, not inferred. "It is present whenever conscious attention is focused on it, in terms of an unconditional certainty" [35].
"This power of being is the prius of everything that has being. It precedes all special contents logically and ontologically. It precedes every separation and makes every interaction possible, because it is the point of identity without which neither separation nor interaction can be thought. This refers basically to the separation and interaction of subject and object, in knowing as well as in acting. The prius of subject and object cannot become an object to which man as a subject is theoretically and practically related. God is no object for us as subjects. He is always that which precedes this division" [36].
In other words, Tillich seems to be saying that if God is conceived as being-itself, rather than as a being, then the subjective reality of God entails his objective reality – objective as ontological ground as opposed to objective as being or subjective only (i.e., being real only in thought). If thought and truth both presuppose this fundamental ground then, as Tillich says, "God is the presupposition of the question of God" [37]. Hence, since the question of God is clearly real [38], God too is real.
Tillich’s second argument for God’s reality as being-itself is actually more implicit than explicit. Nevertheless, it is working as a kind of "hidden assurance" behind all of Tillich’s claims that God does not exist but is the ground of being. The "argument" appears in Tillich’s discussion of the question "Why is there something rather than nothing?" [39]
This question says Tillich, is "meaningless," because no matter what answer is given to it, the same question can be asked again. Hence, one is caught in an infinite regress [40]. The question does serve the function, though, of expressing the "metaphysical shock" which one has when he realizes that there is something but no good reason why there should be – that there could just as well have been nothing, and that this possibility or "power" of nothingness is present in all existing being.
Tillich says, "If one asks why there is not nothing, one attributes being even to nothing" [41]. In other words, thought can imagine the negation of everything that is, but one must realize that, even if there were not anything, then there would be nothing. This, however, is contradictory, for nothing cannot "be." If nothing cannot be then some fundamental ground or power must necessarily exist, or better, be real. Hence, being-itself as ultimate ground of everything is necessarily real!
These two arguments are obviously inter-related and, I think, obviously spurious. To take the second one first, I should think Tillich would see that if everything ceased to exist that would not mean that, suddenly, nothing, as a kind of ontological "thing," had "come into being." The term "non-being" is merely a linguistic sign which stands for the fact that it is possible for things to cease to be. We need not say that if all things ceased to be, then there would "be" nothing, and so nothing would have ontological status, and so would not really be nothing but something – thus requiring being-itself as even more fundamental. On the contrary, if all things ceased to be then there would be a return to what Tillich calls the "primordial night of nothingness" [42]. Further, as Tillich says, such a nothing would not "be" anything at all. It would not "be" something and it would not "be" nothing, if such language entails that an ontological power (being-itself) would have to be presupposed even for there to "be" nothing. Such a state would be gained simply by the absence of all that is. And, if one replies that then the absence of all things would have "being," and, thus, presuppose being-itself, I can only say that he is bewitched by language. To say that there are no unicorns does not entail that the non-being of unicorns has some kind of ontological status. It just means that unicorns as objective realities are not available to any experience whatever.
It is easy to see now, in light of this argument, why Tillich wishes to make a case for non-being as dialectical, "within" being. He wishes to do away with non-being as pure nothingness because that kind of non-being does not require being-itself to give it "being."
The reply to Tillich’s first argument is two-fold: (1) even if there is some ontological ground which provides the unity of subject and object, which is the prius of all thought and being, this prius is not clearly God [43]. It may well be that any legitimate concept of God would have to say that God is the ground of thought and being. But that does not mean that such a ground is God.
(2) One can easily say that truth is only a quality of the propositions which correctly describe the world. Clearly Tillich does not want to say God is a quality of propositions. In light of his previous remarks concerning negativity as a property of judgments, it is reasonable to think that Tillich would reply to this criticism by saying that in order for propositions ever to correctly describe the world there must first be a "ground" for this correctness, just as there must be a "ground" for negativity. But, as was pointed out in connection with negativity, there is no need for such a "ground." One can simply deny Tillich’s ontological realism. He nowhere argues for it but only assumes it. One certainly cannot establish anything about God (or anything else, for that matter) by simply assuming a particular brand of metaphysics which leads inevitably to what one desires. Hence, Tillich’s arguments fail.
To sum up then: Paul Tillich offers at least two arguments to prove the reality of God. One argument claims that if anything at all exists, then there must be an ontological ground by virtue of which whatever exists does so. This is being-itself, the power of being. The second argument claims that even if nothing at all exists there would still have to be being-itself to give the "nothing" its being. I have tried to counter these arguments by showing that, in the first case, Tillich is simply appealing to an ontological realism which he only assumes, and, in the second case, that Tillich is either bewitched by language or (more likely) has developed a special notion of "non-being" which presupposes being-itself.
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