A sliced loaf of bread.

Photo by Charles Chen on Unsplash

I’m not entirely certain this post is going to “work.” Basically, I’m going to try and convince you a long, opaque passage from an out-of-print essay by Paul Tillich is the best thing since sliced bread.

As much as Paul Tillich is revered, his prose is… difficult. Readers offer a lot of explanations for why this may be the case. Sometimes he was writing outside his native German (so it’s his facility with English that is at fault), other times he is translated from German (so it’s just a bad translator).^[i] However, we slice it, though, Tillich is difficult to read because he basically never gives examples and his way of reasoning through issues is… frustrating?

Now that I have confessed before God and everyone that Tillich is hard to read, what I’m going to do is put the passage in front of us and try to convince you it is one of the best things I’ve ever read. I mean, even if you have as hard a time reading Tillich as I do, we also all know he’s a widely influential theologian. So, it can’t hurt to at least try to read one more opaque text by him, right?

We will do this in “side-by-side” commentary style (mileage may vary depending on whether you’re reading on a computer or your phone). But I think it will be worthwhile to first read the whole thing in one go, so here we go, the full passage, then a cool photo of Paul Tillich, and then the side-by-side:

Therefore, the exclusiveness of confessionalism is abandoned, but not by criticism of confessionalism in general but, rather, by a deepening of the confession to the point where it negates itself before the Unconditional. Not skeptical and rational criticism, but only profound religious criticism can overcome the hubris of the confessions. Therefore, this ultimate negation before the Unconditional does not at all preclude an emphatic Yes in conditioned circumstances. In the empirically cultural sphere, confessional conflict has the same right as the conflict that prevails in all creative realms of spirit. But the creative, symbol-bearing conviction of the truth of one’s own confession is not the same as the certainty of the Unconditional itself, which transcends the entire plane of convictions, even confessional ones. This conception of the duality of certainty and conviction with respect to every religious symbol is the presupposition for a religious consciousness of unity directed toward humanity. It is a consciousness that is far from a critical purgation of the confession and its individually creative symbols. Only a religion that includes in its own symbols this negativity toward itself has the power to become a world religion. The more it negates itself from the point of view of the Unconditional, the more justified a claim to absoluteness by a confession or a church, and the easier for religious socialism to enter into the symbols of such a church. But the No coming from the Unconditional is directed not only against itself as confession, but also against itself as a specifically religious sphere. Religion is truer the more it cancels itself out (aufheben) as religion over against culture without thereby losing its specifically religious power. [page 65, Basic Principles of Religious Socialism]

Therefore, the exclusiveness of confessionalism is abandoned, but not by criticism of confessionalism in general but, rather, by a deepening of the confession to the point where it negates itself before the Unconditional.

This is a prophetic statement for the post-denominational era. Tillich “rejects every form of Christianity which wishes to adhere only to pure inwardness” (James Luther Adams, xvii), so here rejects the inward (and individualistic) criticism of confessionalism in general, and instead asserts that the exclusiveness of confessionalism is abandoned through negation before the “Unconditional,” by which Tillich means “God,” but expresses “God” in this way in order to indicate that God is one being or one object among others, all the things that have “conditions,” but is the “unconditioned.” In making this claim, Tillich both simultaneously rejects the rejection of all confessionalism (whether that is denominationalism or identity politics) while also rejecting the reification of one specific confession. It’s a brilliant ecumenical move that protects against the elevation of hyper-individualism as the new confessionalism.

Not skeptical and rational criticism, but only profound religious criticism can overcome the hubris of the confessions. Therefore, this ultimate negation before the Unconditional does not at all preclude an emphatic Yes in conditioned circumstances. In the empirically cultural sphere, confessional conflict has the same right as the conflict that prevails in all creative realms of spirit.

Tillich here continues to drive home his point. It is not the secular criticism of (Christian) confessions that has credibility to overcome them, but religious criticism itself. That is to say, within the debate between confessions (that is, part of the work of theology) there is a lot of room to say, “No.” And one can say “No” often. Nevertheless, because the confessions function within the space of the “conditioned,” confessions and the debate between them can be made quite emphatically. Confessions are secular in the sense that they are just like all creative realms of spirit–they only bump up against their limits in the face of the very thing they are “about.” This is a paradox but a comprehensible one. Confessions have authority because they are “broken.”

But the creative, symbol-bearing conviction of the truth of one’s own confession is not the same as the certainty of the Unconditional itself, which transcends the entire plane of convictions, even confessional ones.

Here we (maybe?) have Tillich’s basic “method of correlation.” I’m going to be honest with all readers and say that I’ve read enough theology over the years to know that part of Tillich’s system of theology was the “method of correlation,” but it’s not always been readily apparent to me what the “method of correlation” does or how it functions. But this passage is as good a place as any to gain clarity. So go with me. Basically, you have in Christianity this notion of something beyond, something Divine, something of Ultimate Concern. Call it revelation. And revelation is more than we can discover for ourselves, it is beyond us and not only beyond us but so distant as to essentially be impossible to translate because it comes from that which is not us and beyond our comprehension. However, at the same time we all recognize that humans do in fact receive this revelation, and we can consider it and believe it. It finds expressions within the “conditions” of existence. So, all Tillich is really saying here is that those who “confess” something do so creatively, they do it with conviction, it makes sense to them and exists within the plane of the conditioned, and it has a correlate, the certainty of the Unconditional itself, which transcends all the confessions. Correlation acknowledges that our certainty of our confession can point to the certainty of the Unconditional while in no way being equated with it. In this passage such correlation serves as a kind of dialectical reasoning.

This conception of the duality of certainty and conviction with respect to every religious symbol is the presupposition for a religious consciousness of unity directed toward humanity. It is a consciousness that is far from a critical purgation of the confession and its individually creative symbols. Only a religion that includes in its own symbols this negativity toward itself has the power to become a world religion.

Up to now I bet you have been wondering why any of this is better than sliced bread. And I’m going to be honest, as soon as I write about sliced bread toasted with melted butter spread across the top, I begin to wonder that myself. But… we have now arrived at the payoff for everything that has led up to this point. Here Tillich is paving a way forward for religious consciousness to serve humanity. I think this is incredibly important, because so much of religious life in our country and elsewhere seems to get this backward, as if humanity were in the service of religion rather than the other way around. Tillich is saying that if we retain confessionalism (as he is outlining it) with the appropriate posture toward the Unconditional, then precisely there you have a religion worthy of the name, with the power (as he says) “to become a world religion.” “A religion that includes in its own symbols this negativity toward itself…” Repeat that line to yourself a few times. That’s the perfect crisp on the bread as it comes out of the toaster.

The more it negates itself from the point of view of the Unconditional, the more justified a claim to absoluteness by a confession or a church, and the easier for religious socialism to enter into the symbols of such a church. But the No coming from the Unconditional is directed not only against itself as confession, but also against itself as a specifically religious sphere. Religion is truer the more it cancels itself out as religion over against culture without thereby losing its specifically religious power.

Now here’s where I’ll admit to all readers that if you go and find this essay in the now out-of-print collection of Tillich essays published under the title Political Expectation, you may spend long stretches of time wondering how precisely it is an essay on “Basic Principles of Religious Socialism.” I said at the outset Tillich’s way of arguing can be frustrating. I think we could even say infuriating. But then, just as you are paging back and forth in the text wondering whether you’re reading the wrong essay (because you want to hear what Tillich has to say about religious socialism and he doesn’t seem to be saying it) suddenly he hits you with this. Let’s look at that first line, because it’s the butter on the toast. “The more it negates itself from the point of view of the Unconditional, the more justified a claim to absoluteness by a confession or a church, and the easier for religious socialism to enter into the symbols of such a church.” What Tillich is saying here is the Tillichian qualification of the criticism, often leveled against Leftist Christianity, that it has “caved” to the culture. Tillich makes precisely the opposite case. He says that because a religion is truer the more it cancels itself out, just so it is precisely in such religions that religious socialism can draw close and even enter into the symbols of the church. He says this is “religion over against culture without thereby losing its specifically religious power.” And its specific religious power is exemplified in its canceling itself out. What that means in practice is that a religious socialist can join the regular socialists within their cultural sphere of understanding while themselves being deeply religious. Same, but with a difference.

I’d be remiss in not providing one additional passage from the essay that arrives about one paragraph later. Tillich writes, “Likewise it is truer the closer it stands to theonomy in which religious symbols are the ultimate and most universal expression of autonomous cultural consciousness, and in which autonomous culture-forms radiate the fullness of the import of the Unconditional. The closer a religion stands to this ideal of theonomy, the more easily can an autonomously born religious socialism unite with it. For theonomy is the goal of religious socialism.”

Once again, we have the problem of Tillich’s density. We had just kind of figured out what he means by the Unconditional, we’re trying to wrap our heads around the method of correlation and the idea of a religion being truer the more it negates itself, and suddenly Tillich is talking about “theonomy,” whatever that is, and says it is the goal of religious socialism.

But okay, I’ll bite. For Tillich, theonomy is the state where society (or government, etc.) meets with the “mind of God.” It’s the Lord’s Prayer line, “On earth as it is in heaven.” And he distinguishes this religion/culture relationship from heteronomy (where religion is imposed from the outside and is oppressive–think Christian nationalism), and autonomy (independence from any external authority). Basically, Tillich has a ranking here, and of the three, heteronomy is the worst, autonomy is a kind of middle, but ideally theonomy would be the way–precisely because it is a kind of autonomy that is as directly correlated as possible with the Unconditional, with God. As Tillich writes (see how I just keep quoting him again and again until we start to understand him?), “The closer it stands to theonomy in which religious symbols are the ultimate and most universal expression of autonomous cultural consciousness, and in which autonomous culture-forms radiate the fullness of the import of the Unconditional.”

The short and non-Tillichian version (precisely because by giving us a bumper sticker I’m being non-dialectical) of this would be, “I think Jesus was a socialist.” For a bumper sticker, that’s better, but if we’re looking for a theology that will preserve the tension between the Unconditional and all our conditioned confessions in a way that puts an ecumenically astute understanding of religion in the service of the human, we can thank the opaque yet brilliant Paul Tillich.