The New Being
by Paul Tillich
Part II: The New Being as Freedom
Paul Tillich is generally considered one of the
century's outstanding and influential thinkers. After teaching theology
and philosophy at various German universities, he came to the United States
in 1933. For many years he was Professor of Philosophical Theology at Union
Theological Seminary in New York City, then University Professor at Harvard
University. His books include Systematic Theology; The Courage to Be; Dynamics
of Faith; Love, Power and Justice; Morality and Beyond; and Theology of
Culture. The New Being was published by Charles Scribner's Sons in 1955.
This material was prepared for Religion Online by Ted & Winnie Brock.
Chapter 8:
And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of
grace and truth; . . . For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth
came through Jesus Christ.
JOHN 1:14, 17.
Why do you not understand what I say? . . . you are of your father
the devil. . . . He was a murderer from the beginning, and has nothing
to do with truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks
according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies.
JOHN 8:43, 44.
Pilate said to him, "So you are a king?" Jesus answered, "You say
that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I have come into the
world, to bear witness to the truth. Every one who is of the truth hears
my voice." Pilate said to him, "What is truth?"
JOHN 18:37, 38.
Jesus said to him, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life."
JOHN 14:6.
He who does what is true, comes to the light.
JOHN 3:21.
And I will pray the Father, and he will give you . . .the Spirit
of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor
knows him; you know him, for he dwells with you, and will be in you.
JOHN 14:16, 17.
When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth.
JOHN 16:13.
Let us love one another; for love is of God, and he who loves is
born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God; for
God is love.
I JOHN 4:7, 8.
Jesus then said to the Jews who had believed in Him, "If you continue
in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and
the truth will make you free."
JOHN 8:31, 32.
In the above passages there are words in which Jesus speaks about truth.
Another of these words shall be the center of our meditation, the word
in which He combines truth and freedom: "The truth will make you free."
The question of truth is universally human; but like everything human
it was first manifest on a special place in a special group. It was the
Greek mind in which the passionate search for truth was most conspicuous;
and it was the Greek world in which, and to which, the Gospel of John was
written. The words, here said by Jesus, are, according to ancient custom,
put into His mouth by the evangelist who wanted to show the answer of Christianity
to the central question of the Hellenic mind: the question of truth. The
answer is given also to us, for we, too, ask the question of truth. And
some of us ask it as passionately, and sometimes as desperately, as the
Greeks did.
It is often at an early age that we are moved by the desire for truth.
When I, myself, as a fifteen-year-old boy received the words of our text
as the motto for my future life from the confirming minister, who happened
to be my father, I felt that this was just what I was looking for; and
I remember that I was not alone in my group with this longing for truth.
But I also observed, in myself and in others, that the early passion for
truth is due to be lost in the adolescent and adult years of our lives.
How does this happen?
The truth the child first receives is imposed upon him by adults, predominantly
by his parents. This cannot be otherwise; and he cannot help accepting
it. The passion for truth is silenced by answers which have the weight
of undisputed authority, be it that of the mother or the father, or an
older friend, or a gang, or the representatives of a social pattern. But
sooner or later the child revolts against the truth given to him. He denies
the authorities either all together, or one in the name of the other. He
uses the teachers against the parents, the gang against the teachers, a
friend against the gang, society against the friend.
This revolt is as unavoidable as was his early dependence on authority.
The authorities gave him something to live on, the revolt makes him responsible
for the truth he accepts or rejects.
But whether in obedience or in revolt, the time comes when a new way
to truth is opened to us, especially to those in academic surroundings:
The way of scholarly work. Eagerly we take it. It seems so safe, so successful,
so independent of both authority and willfulness. It liberates from prejudices
and superstitions; it makes us humble and honest. Where else, besides in
scholarly work, should we look for truth? There are many in our period,
young and old, primitive and sophisticated, practical and scientific, who
accept this answer without hesitation. For them scholarly truth is truth
altogether. Poetry may give beauty, but it certainly does not give truth.
Ethics may help us to a good life, but it cannot help us to truth. Religion
may produce deep emotions, but it should not claim to have truth. Only
science gives us truth. It gives us new insights into the way nature works,
into the texture of human history, into the hidden things of the human
mind. It gives a feeling of joy, inferior to no other joy. He who has experienced
this transition from darkness, or dimness, to the sharp light of knowledge
will always praise scientific truth and understanding and say with some
great medieval theologians, that the principles through which we know our
world are the eternal divine light in our souls. And yet, when we ask those
who have finished their studies in our colleges and universities whether
they have found there a truth which is relevant to their lives they will
answer with hesitation. Some will say that they have lost what they had
of relevant truth; others will say that they don’t care for such a truth
because life goes on from day to day without it. Others will tell you of
a person, a book, an event outside their studies which gave them the feeling
of a truth that matters. But they all will agree that it is not the scholarly
work which can give truth relevant for our life.
Where else, then, can we get it? "Nowhere," Pilate answers in his talk
with Jesus. "What is truth?" he asks, expressing in these three words his
own and his contemporaries’ despair of truth, expressing also the despair
of truth in millions of our contemporaries, in schools and studios, in
business and professions. In all of us, open or hidden, admitted or repressed,
the despair of truth is a permanent threat. We are children of our period
as Pilate was. Both are periods of disintegration, of a world-wide loss
of values and meanings. Nobody can separate himself completely from this
reality, and nobody should even try. Let me do something unusual from a
Christian standpoint, namely, to express praise of Pilate—not the unjust
judge, but the cynic and sceptic; and of all those amongst us in whom Pilate’s
question is alive. For in the depth of every serious doubt and every despair
of truth, the passion for truth is still at work. Don’t give in too quickly
to those who want to alleviate your anxiety about truth. Don’t be seduced
into a truth which is not really your truth, even if the seducer is your
church, or your party, or your parental tradition. Go with Pilate, if you
cannot go with Jesus; but go in seriousness with him!
Twofold are the temptations to evade the burden of asking for the truth
that matters. The one is the way of those who claim to have the truth and
the other is the way of those who do not care for the truth. The first
ones are called "the Jews" in our gospel. They point to their tradition
which goes back to Abraham. Abraham is their father; so they have all truth,
and do not need to be worried by the question which they encounter in Jesus.
Many among us, Christians and secularists, are "Jews" in the sense of the
Fourth Gospel. They point to their tradition which goes back to the Church
Fathers, or to the popes, or to the Reformers, or to the makers of the
American Constitution. Their church or their nation is their mother, so
they have all truth and do not need to worry about the question of truth.
Would Jesus tell them, perhaps, what He told the Jews—that even if the
church or the nation is their mother, they carry with them the heritage
of the father of untruth; that the truth they have is not the truth which
makes free? Certainly there is no freedom where there is self-complacency
about the truth of one’s own beliefs. There is no freedom where there is
ignorant and fanatical rejection of foreign ideas and ways of life. There
is not freedom but demonic bondage where one’s own truth is called the
ultimate truth. For this is an attempt to be like God, an attempt which
is made in the name of God.
There is the second way of avoiding the question of truth—the way of
not caring for it, of indifference. It is the way of the majority of the
people today, as well as at the time of Jesus. Life, they say to themselves,
is a mixture of truth, half-truth and falsehood. It is quite possible to
live with his mixture, to muddle through most of the difficulties of life
without asking the question of a truth that matters ultimately. There may
be boundary situations, a tragic event, a deep spiritual fall, death. But
as long as they are far removed, the question of truth can also stay far
away. Hence, the common attitude—a little bit of Pilate’s scepticism, especially
in things which it is not dangerous today to doubt, as, for instance, God
and the Christ; and a little bit of the Jew’s dogmatism, especially in
things which one is requested to accept today, as, for instance, an economic
or political way of life. In other words, some scepticism and some dogmatism,
and a shrewd method of balancing them liberate one from the burden of asking
the question of ultimate truth.
But those of us who dare to face the question of truth may listen to
what the Fourth Gospel says about it. The first thing which strikes us
is that the truth of which Jesus speaks is not a doctrine but a reality,
namely, He Himself: "I am the truth." This is a profound transformation
of the ordinary meaning of truth. For us, statements are true or false;
people may have truth or not; but how can they be truth, even the truth?
The truth of which the Fourth Gospel speaks is a true reality—that reality
which does not deceive us if we accept it and live with it. If Jesus says,
"I am the truth," he indicates that in Him the true, the genuine, the ultimate
reality is present; or, in other words, that God is present, unveiled,
undistorted, in His infinite depth, in His unapproachable mystery. Jesus
is not the truth because His teachings are true. But His teachings are
true because they express the truth which He Himself is. He is more than
His words. And He is more than any word said about Him.
The truth which makes us free is neither the teaching of Jesus nor the
teaching about Jesus. Those who have called the teaching of Jesus "the
truth" have subjected the people to a servitude under the law. And most
people like to live under a law. They want to be told what to think and
what not to think. And they accept Jesus as the infallible teacher and
giver of a new law. But even the words of Jesus, if taken as a law, are
not the truth which makes us free. And they should not be used as such
by our scholars and preachers and religious teachers. They should not be
used as a collection of infallible prescriptions for life and thought.
They point to the truth, but they are not a law of truth. Nor are the doctrines
about Him the truth that liberates. I say this to you as somebody who all
his life has worked for a true expression of the truth which is the Christ.
But the more one works, the more one realizes that our expressions, including
everything we have learned from our teachers and from the teaching of the
Church in all generations, is not the truth that makes us free.
The Church very early forgot the word of our Gospel that He is the truth;
and claimed that her doctrines about Him are the truth. But these doctrines,
however necessary and good they were, proved to be not the truth that liberates.
Soon they became tools of suppression, of servitude under authorities;
they became means to prevent the honest search for truth—weapons to split
the souls of people between loyalty to the Church and sincerity to truth.
And in this way they gave deadly weapons to those who attacked the Church
and its doctrines in the name of truth. Not everybody feels this conflict.
There are masses of people who feel safe under doctrinal laws. They are
safe, but it is the safety of him who has not yet found his spiritual freedom,
who has not yet found his true self. It is the dignity and the danger of
Protestantism that it exposes its adherents to the insecurity of asking
the question of truth for themselves and that it throws them into the freedom
and responsibility of personal decisions, of the right to choose between
the ways of the sceptics, and those who are orthodox, of the indifferent
masses, and Him who is the truth that liberates. For this is the greatness
of Protestantism: that it points beyond the teachings of Jesus and beyond
the doctrines of the Church to the being of Him whose being is the truth.
How do we reach this truth? "By doing it," is the answer of the Fourth
Gospel. This does not mean being obedient to the commandments, accepting
them and fulfilling them. Doing the truth means living out of the reality
which is He who is the truth, making His being the being of ourselves and
of our world. And again, we ask, "How can this happen?" "By remaining in
Him" is the answer of the Fourth Gospel, i.e., by participating in His
being. "Abide in me and I in you," he says. The truth which liberates is
the truth in which we participate, which is a part of us and we a part
of it. True discipleship is participation. If the real, the ultimate, the
divine reality which is His being becomes our being we are in the truth
that matters.
And a third time we ask. "How can this happen?" There is an answer to
this question in our Gospel which may deeply shock us: "Every one who is
of the truth hears my voice." Being "of the truth" means, coming from the
true, the ultimate reality, being determined in one’s being by the divine
ground of all being, by that reality which is present in the Christ. If
we have part in it, we recognize it wherever it appears; we recognize it
as it appears in its fullness in the Christ. But, some may ask in despair:
"If we have no part in it, if we are not of the truth, are we then forever
excluded from it? Must we accept a life without truth, a life in error
and meaninglessness? Who tells me that I am of the truth, that I have a
chance to reach it?" Nobody can tell you; but there is one criterion: If
you seriously ask the question, "Am I of the truth?" you are of the truth.
If you do not ask it seriously, you do not really want, and you do not
deserve, and you cannot get, an answer! He who asks seriously the question
of the truth that liberates, is already on his way to liberation. He may
still be in the bondage of dogmatic self-assurance but he has begun to
be free from it. He may still be in the bondage of cynical despair, but
he has already started to emerge from it. He may still be in the bondage
of unconcern about the truth that matters, but his unconcern is already
shaken. These all are of the truth and on their road to the truth.
On this road you will meet the liberating truth in many forms except
in one form: you never will meet it in the form of propositions which you
can learn or write down and take home. But you may encounter it in one
sentence of a book or of a conversation or of a lecture, or even of a sermon.
This sentence is not the truth, but it may open you up for the truth and
it may liberate you from the bondage to opinions and prejudices and conventions.
Suddenly, true reality appears like the brightness of lightening in a formerly
dark place. Or, slowly, true reality appears like a landscape when the
fog becomes thinner and thinner and finally disappears. New darknesses,
new fogs will fall upon you; but you have experienced, at least once, the
truth and the freedom given by the truth. Or you may be grasped by the
truth in an encounter with a piece of nature— its beauty and its transitoriness;
or in an encounter with a human being in friendship and estrangement, in
love, in difference and hate; or in an encounter with yourself in a sudden
insight into the hidden strivings of your soul, in disgust and even hatred
of yourself, in reconciliation with and acceptance of yourself. In these
encounters you may meet the true reality—the truth which liberates from
illusions and false authorities, from enslaving anxieties, desires and
hostilities, from a wrong self-rejection and a wrong self-affirmation.
And it may even happen that you are grasped by the picture and power
of Him who is truth. There is no law that this must happen. Many at all
times and in all places have encountered the true reality which is in Him
without knowing His name—as He Himself said. They were of the truth and
they recognized the truth, although they had never seen Him who is the
truth. And those who have seen Him, the Christians in all generations,
have no guarantee that they participate in the truth which He is. Maybe
they were not of the truth. Those, however, who are of the truth and who
have encountered Him who is the truth have one precious thing beyond the
others: They have the point from which to judge all truth they encounter
anywhere. They look at life which never lost the communion with the divine
ground of all life, and they look at a life which never lost the union
of love with all beings.
And this leads to the last word which the man who has written the Gospel
and the Letters of John has to say about truth: that the truth that liberates
is the power of love, for God is love. The father of the lie binds us to
himself by binding us to ourselves—or to the that in us which is not our
true self. Love liberates from the father of the lie because it liberates
us from our false self to our true self—to that self which is grounded
in true reality. Therefore, distrust every claim for truth where you do
not see truth united with love; and be certain that you are of the truth
and that the truth has taken hold of you only when love has taken hold
of you and has started to make you free from yourselves.
