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religion  namely, that of the emperor, or the genius of the emperor. It is therefore very
important to realize what happened when Islam appeared. For now a real problem arose. A
new religion, a living religion, a very powerful and distinct living religion, challenged
Christianity. Up to this time such a situation had not occurred for the early church.
Professor: Dr. Tillich, do you find no universal elements in Judaism before Christianity?
Dr. Tillich: Oh, now you refer to the universalism of the prophets. Yes, we find in the voice of
Abraham, "In thee all nations of the earth shall be blessed." That is certainly a universal idea.
Having a special religion and staying within it was never a part of the prophetic religion. We
even find a very universalistic trait (I believe in Second Isaiah), when Cyrus, the Persian king,
is called "Messiah" because he is an anointed king used by Yahweh, the universal God, to
liberate Israel from the Babylonian captivity. So from the point of view of providential action,
God was universal. He called an adherent of a quite different religion, Cyrus, to liberate Israel
by conquering Babylon. That is the first universalism, but we must remember that this is not
an acknowledgment of the religion of Cyrus. He became simply a servant of Yahweh and was
called "my servant Cyrus," meaning that the god of Israel was the universal God. That is very
clear in Second Isaiah. [Is. 45: l]3 But I do not see anything like this elsewhere in Old
Testament history.
Professor: Can you say that the universalism which developed with Christianity was the result
of the life of Jesus and not the result of the historical circumstances associated with the
Roman Empire? Was it something which would naturally have developed in Judaism
anyway?
Dr. Tillich: It is true that Judaism produced the first man to develop the Logos doctrine in
terms of the phi1osophy of religion: the Jew Philo of Alexandria. His ideas were similar to
those developed by the church fathers. My neighbor in Harvard has demonstrated in his well-
known writings how very much the church fathers depended on Philo, the Jew, in their
universalism.4 But Philonic Judaism was never accepted by the actual Jewish tradition. It was
a deviation during the Hellenistic period. And the Hellenization of Judaism was what later
Jewish tradition reacted to most negatively. In Philo we have a phenomenon very similar to
what we find among the early Christians. There was of course no relation between religion
and the nation or the tribe. Moses was interpreted in terms of Plato, and this was all combined
into a typically Hellenistic universalism.
Grace, Reconciliation, and Forgiveness
But the problem of universalism and legalism is not so simple. I think I made the point that
the criticism of the Jews is that Christ cannot be the Christ because he has not changed the
world. And in turn, the Christian criticism, the Pauline criticism, is that the law in Judaism
binds us to that from which we are liberated by Christ, by grace. These are the two mutual
criticisms that always remain. In dialogue, of course, they appear much more refined. In my
last talk with Martin Buber about the law, I voiced this typically Pauline Christian criticism,
and he answered, "That is not what the law means." Now certainly that may not be what the
law means for him, but the law seems to be taken literally by orthodox Judaism. Buber is a
mystically-minded Jew. He said that the commandments are like stars: We cannot fulfill them,
but they show us the direction in which we should go. For example, "You shall not kill," or
better, "You shall not murder." We don t know what that really means, or in what ways we
murder. How it is related to war or to criminal justice  we do not know for sure, and so we
proceed as best we can. Other Jews have told me that the law is a help, but not a commanding
power that presses us down and pushes us, as it did Paul and Luther, into despair, so that only
the message of grace can save us from it. I believe that this is one of the points where the
more modern-minded Jews have overcome much of the earlier Jewish legalism  not fully,
but to a certain extent.
On the other hand, it is obvious that grace  let us say the "sin-forgiveness structure" or
"justification-by-grace structure" of Pauline and Lutheran Christianity  is not the only
important thing in Christianity. In fact, it has lost much the central importance it had for Paul
and Luther, and even for myself. In the meantime, I have learned by life and thought that
there are other problems, and that perhaps in Paul himself the central problem was the divine
Spirit and not justification by grace. The divine Spirit fulfills, and so makes possible an
approach to the law.
Student: Purely on a layman s level there is a book called Marjorie Morningstar by Herman
Wouk, who wrote The Caine Mutiny. He is a novelist, and an Orthodox Jew, he says. And it s
a fascinating book from an orthodox Christian point of view, for those who believe that all
Jews are terribly unhappy and burdened. In this book you find that he is gloriously happy in
his tradition and obeys the laws out of real choice, and is willing to identify himself with the
history of the Jewish people, not out of constraint or by the force of the traditional.
Dr. Tillich: Yes, I have been told this by many Jewish friends. But the problem is: What is the
inner reaction if we feel that we are sinners, that we have done a terrible wrong? What then?
And Luther, especially clear on this point, is more modern. How do we experience a merciful [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]